What A Wicked Game
by Josie-Thompson
Summary: Shepherd and Grey didn't have a one night stand, they met at the hospital! Rewrite of the show, beginning in with 1x01! SEASON 1 COMPLETE.
1. This Head I Hold

**A/N** : I've never read any Grey's Anatomy fanfiction before. I have no idea if this plotline has been done before (I assume it has been), so let me know in a review if it has, and what you think of this rather rushed attempt at exploring that storyline. Before or after reading this, I'd recommend rewatching the pilot. Most of the dialogue here is borrowed from the pilot, and I own none of it. But there are subtle things I've added and subtracted that will be important in how the story develops. If you guys like the idea, I'll continue.

Chapter I: This Head I Hold

She wakes up on the cold tile floor of a bathroom. Her mouth tastes like a mixture of cheap liquors and there's vomit in her hair. Left foot asleep, right arm folded uncomfortably under her head. Meredith uses the dusty lid of the toilet as a lever and pulls herself up, finding the mirror. A shivering girl with one hell of a hangover looks back at her. It's bright outside, the sunlight reflects off the mirror. It's her first day of work. Day one, and she wants to play hooky. Meredith gives the half-empty bottle by the bathtub a baleful glance, then looks back to the mirror, squares her shoulders. The light reflects off and hits her in the eye, cueing a throbbing headache.

Tequila sunrise.

Seattle looks alarmingly cheerful this morning. She preferred the city last night, dark and cold and wet. There's the view she thought she'd forgotten, there's the Space Needle, there's the bay. A perfect welcome home, Meredith thinks as she drives to work. Hungover and tired already. The hospital comes into view as she changes lanes and a rush of adrenaline thrills up her spine.

And terrified, don't forget terrified.

* * *

Meredith vaguely remembers some of these faces from the mixer they'd all gone to the week before. In the locker room the tall, lanky guy who'd nervously asked her out after consuming three glasses of cheap wine has his scrub top on inside out. The girl that has the extra two inches of height she'd kill for is carefully arranging her long brown hair over the stethoscope draped around her neck.

"O'Malley, Yang, Grey, Stevens!"

Day one of being a doctor. A hungover doctor who looks like she just stepped out of the ninth grade.

She's screwed.

* * *

" _You_ _'_ _re_ a doctor?" Katie Bryce asks skeptically, giving Meredith the once-over as she wheels her out of the room and down the hallway.

It comes out more easily than she thought it would. "Yes." Katie purses her lips. "I'm going to take you to do some tests, okay?"

"Why do I have to have all those dumb tests anyway? I've done them all before at the other hospital," Katie asks. "If you're a doctor, why can't you just fix it?"

"We have to find out what's wrong with you first," Meredith explains, pressing the button for the fifth floor and hoping for the best. "That's what these tests are about." Katie looks at her again.

"There's no way you're a doctor. You look like my cousin, Amber. She's a nurse, but she doesn't actually do anything. She, like, makes sure babies don't die during the night." Katie rolls her eyes as Meredith scans the list of floors posted inside the elevator again, looking for Radiology. They reach level five and the elevator doors open. "You're lost."

Meredith looks down at her. "I'm not lost. How are you feeling?"

"How do you _think_ I'm feeling? I'm missing my pageant!"

Meredith raises one eyebrow. "You're missing your pageant?"

"The Spokane Teen Miss." She rolls her eyes again like this is common knowledge. "I was in the top ten after the first two rounds. I could have won!"

Meredith wheels Katie down the hallway, her feet already sore. She shouldn't have worn the new tennis shoes. Meredith turns the gurney around, heading back towards the elevator.

"Hello!" Katie says, annoyed. "You're so lost. What are you, like, _new_?" Meredith bites her tongue, thinking, ' _Yeah, I_ _'_ _m lost as hell, and you_ _'_ _re not making it any easier_ '.

Second floor now, and Katie is still going strong. "I twisted my ankle in talent rehearsal. I do rhythmic gymnastics," she explains, "which is, like, really cool. Nobody else does it. And I tripped over my ribbon." Meredith is scanning her brain trying to figure out what 'rhythmic gymnastics' is, and how it would involve a ribbon. "And I didn't get stuck with someone this clueless, and that was, like, a nurse." She breaks off to smile sarcastically. "And you're a _doctor_." Katie sinks back into her pillows and crosses her arms over her chest, sighing. "You're so lost. This is taking forever."

* * *

After Katie's C.T scan (third floor) and a rushed lunch, Meredith is back with her patient, Miss 'Pain in the Ass'. Katie's still asleep in the bed next to her, and Meredith is close to joining her in dreamland. The silence in the hospital room, punctured by the beep of the heart monitor, is strange to her. Beep beep. The sound of a life. She glances at Katie, sleeping so peacefully. This young girl with her own brain working against her. Meredith stands and begins to walk to the door, hoping to find a vending machine down the hall, when Katie's parents walk in.

A woman with the same shade of pale blonde hair as her daughter hurries to Katie, her heels clicking against the floor. "Katie, honey, Mom and Dad are here," she comforts. Katie dozes on.

"They gave her a sedative for the C.T scan, so she's a little groggy," Meredith explains. Mrs. Bryce pulls her eyes away from her daughter and fixes them on Meredith. The look of worry and trust in those brown eyes momentarily throws her. What would it be like, Meredith wonders, to be cared for so much?

"Our doctor at home said she might need some operation," Katie's father says, looking at Meredith with little faith. Katie is her father's daughter. "Is that true?"

"What kind of operation?" Mrs. Bryce asks.

Meredith begins to move away from them. Her appetite is gone, and her mind scrambles to come up with something that might give them some answers. "She's, um —well, you know what? I'm not the doctor. I'm a doctor, but I'm not Katie's doctor, so I'll go get him for you." They nod at her, and Meredith flees for the door.

* * *

A few minutes of ' _where the hell am I?_ ' later, she runs into Dr. Bailey. The resident looks at her in annoyance.

"What?"

"Katie's parents have questions. Do you talk to them, or do I ask Burke?" Meredith asks, unsure. Dr. Bailey waves her question away.

"No, Burke's off the case," she explains. "Katie belongs to the new attending now, Dr. Shepherd. He's over there." She points in a general direction, walks away, and Meredith scans the floor for Dr. Shepherd.

Holy. Shit.

In front of her is a handsome, tall attending with dark hair. All that hair to cover up a brain full of neurological terminology that's slipping out of Meredith's brain with every passing hour. The medical texts she'd been reading over on Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy while waiting for Katie to wake up were, in addition to simple exhaustion, what had been making her fall asleep in a chair beside Katie's bed in the first place.

The neuro surgeon looks up from the file in his hands, sees her frozen in front of him, and smiles curiously. As if shoved by a force of air, Meredith moves forward. His colleagues leave them, their post-lunch conversation evidently having coming to a close. "Yes?"

"Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith asks, hoping her cheeks aren't flushed, although they feel warm. He's still smiling at her. She knows she looks every bit the nervous intern. He nods.

"Doctor…?" he prompts.

"Grey, I'm Doctor Grey," Meredith explains, gaining some footing in her ill-fitting tennis shoes. "I have a case, well, it's not my case, but it's this teenager," she explains. "Katie Bryce. She's been having seizures with no known cause, and her parents have some questions. I…Dr. Bailey said I should ask you, that you were the new attending on the case."

Dr. Shepherd nods again, serious now. "Okay, do you have her chart?" Meredith freezes again. The attending sighs, turns her with a touch of his hand, and leads her to the door she'd just come out of. "I'll take a look at her chart, then maybe I can answer some of their questions." She nods, walking with purpose and embarrassment from her rambling. "No known cause?" he asks, walking beside her.

Meredith shakes her head, keeping her eyes ahead of her. "Her doctor in Spokane diagnosed her with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy."

"Which is a pretty broad diagnosis," Shepherd says. "Patients with JME can have varying types of seizures, ranging from simple myoclonic jerks, atonic drops, absence, all the way to tonic clonic. What types is she presenting?"

The image of Katie as they'd unloaded her from the chopper, her limbs thrashing, her eyes rolled back, flashed in her mind. 'A fish on dry land', Burke had called her. In the moment, Meredith had thought the expression somewhat funny. After knowing Katie for the past few hours, though, she finds she doesn't think of it as amusing. Katie may be a pain in the ass, a teen with not much upstairs, but she was a girl with two parents who obviously cared about her, about her troubled brain. About the seizures she couldn't control.

"She was airlifted here," Meredith responds, more confidence behind her words. "Arrived in the middle of a five minute long tonic clonic. Since then she's been stable, I've been monitoring her."

They reach the Pediatric Neurology wing and Shepherd opens the door, letting her go first. "Well, let's get her chart and look at her labs. It could be a simple change in medication or an increase in dosage that would get the seizures under control." They reach the nurses station, and he asks for a copy of the chart.

* * *

No answers and one overripe apple later, Meredith is sitting on a gurney on the ground floor along with her fellow interns, cursing her tennis shoes and the lingering hangover from her ill-fated decision that a few shots of tequila sitting alone in her mother's empty house would ease the stress of beginning her first day as a surgical intern. She moves her fingertips over the pressure points near her temples and thinks about the potential benefits of giving up alcohol altogether. George O'Malley is talking about his failed appendectomy and subsequent nickname.

"No one's calling you '007'", she and Izzie assure him. Next to her, Izzie is doing some sort of bizarre yoga move involving stretching her arms over her head. Just looking at her is making Meredith's body ache.

"I was on the elevator and Murphy whispered, '007'," George says, wheeling himself around in a forgotten wheelchair. As unfortunate as it is that his first surgery had gone wrong, Meredith knows that, were any of them in his position, standing over that operating table, a life in their hands, they'd be scared shitless. Probably would have cracked, too. She can feel her eyes drooping again, but then Cristina springs to her feet, heading toward the vending machine. Meredith's arches protest just watching her.

"How many times do we have to go through this, George," Cristina asks, annoyed. "Five, ten? Give me a number, or else I'm gonna hit you." Meredith smiles sleepily.

"Murphy whispered, '007', and everyone laughed," George insists. Puppy dog eyes.

Izzie continues her strange stretch, leaning to the other side. "He wasn't talking about you."

George looks up. "Are you sure?"

Half asleep by now, Meredith asks, "Would we lie to you?" There's rain falling against the glass behind her head. There's the Seattle she remembers.

"Yes!" George says.

"007 is a state of mind," Cristina calls from the vending machine.

George rolls his eyes. "Oh, says the girl who finished first in her class at Stanford!"

Their pagers all beep. Meredith opens her eyes (when had she closed them?) and squints at her pager. "Oh, man. It's 911 for Katie Bryce," she shifts her legs and moves off the gurney with as much strength as she can muster. Her feet scream. Forty-five bucks wasted on a pair of New Balance tennis shoes? Never again. "I gotta go."

* * *

Remembering Dr. Bailey's words, Meredith rushes up the stairs back to Pediatric Neurology, trying to remember exactly where Katie's room is located. When she finally makes it to the girl's room, Katie flops her magazine on her lap.

"Took you long enough!" she complains, flopping her magazine on her lap. Meredith tries to catch her breath.

"You're okay? The nurse paged me '911'!"

Katie sighs. "I had to go all 'Exorcist' to get her to even pick up the phone." Meredith's headache rages. She's surprised Katie's even seen 'The Exorcist', now that she thinks about it.

"Wait. There's nothing wrong with you?" Meredith clarifies.

"I'm bored."

She wonders if abandoning a patient is considered bad form.

* * *

The next time she's paged '911' for Katie Bryce, it's a blessing in disguise. Alex Karev, a fellow intern, is another pain in the ass. Misdiagnosing a patient in front of her eyes. Meredith takes a slow walk up the stairs as if hiking a mountain. Maybe she can use Katie as an excuse to sit down this time, 'monitor' her. If she closes the door maybe she can even sneak in a quick nap.

Chaos greets her when she reaches Katie's room. Nurses in green scrubs are scrambling to turn Katie on her left side as the girl flails again. Tonic clonic. Grand mal. A fish on dry land. Not funny at all.

"What took you so long?" a nurse asks as Meredith enters the room. Her heart is racing, she suddenly misses the white coat she'd left downstairs, its perceived weight. Without it she feels naked and cold. Katie continues to seize. Another nurse gives Meredith a quick update.

"She's been having multiple grand mal seizures," he says. "Now, how do you want to proceed?"

She's going to faint, that's all there is to it. The nurses have successfully turned Katie on her side. The girl Meredith has been cursing for hours needs her help, needs it now.

"Dr. Grey, are you listening to me?!"

 _I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor,_ Meredith chants, her mind spinning. The nurse tells her the drugs he's administered to Katie. Two drugs used to combat seizures.

"Dr. Grey, you need to tell us what you want to do!" The nurse insists. His tone conveys both urgency and a reminder of her responsibility in the situation. "Dr. Grey!"

Katie continues to seize with no sign of the seizure ending. Like this she could reach Status Epilepticus and never wake up. Another drug, another drug, what's another Anti-Epileptic Drug? Feeling lightheaded and out of her league, Meredith pretends she's wearing her white coat. A weight, something to ground her.

"Okay, she's full on Lorazepam?" she asks.

"She's had four milligrams," a nurse confirms.

"You've paged Dr. Bailey and Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith asks urgently.

A nurse stands up. "Lorazepam's not working," he says. Katie thrashes on the bed, her heart racing faster than Meredith's.

"Phenobarbital," she says. "Load her with Phenobarbital." Another AED, a common one. A nurse grabs the drug and injects it into Katie's I.V.

"Pheno's in," a nurse confirms.

"No change!"

Meredith scrambles. "Dr. Grey, you need to tell us what you want to do!"

 _I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor, I_ _'_ _m a doctor._

The next moments pass in a collection of flashes. A mess of fireworks on New Year's Eve. Loud, too bright, exhilarating, terrifying. She's trained for this, but nothing has prepared Meredith for what it would feel like to make someone's heart beat again. Beep, beep, beep. The sound of a life.

Amidst the bustle of nurses clearing away all the equipment used to save Katie, Dr. Shepherd arrives, his face serious. No curious smile in Meredith's direction this time. "What the hell happened?" he asks no one in particular.

"She had a seizure, and her heart stopped," Meredith relays.

He shoots her a look that makes her imaginary white coat, all that was grounding her in the situation, fall to the floor. "You were supposed to be monitoring her!"

"I couldn't have stopped the onset of a grand mal seizure!" Meredith counters. Shepherd listens to the girl's heart, not looking at Meredith. One of the nurses clears their throat as the team filters out awkwardly. Shepherd looks up, brow furrowed. Meredith continues. "I checked on her, and —"

"I got her," he says, waving Meredith away. "Just —just go."

She stays for a moment, feeling like she might cry, then leaves the room. Is this what George had felt when he'd frozen in the operating room? Only she can't hold it as well as he seemed to. Meredith runs into the nearest bathroom, followed by a concerned Cristina, and upchucks adrenaline and shame into the nearest trashcan. Looking up at Cristina, wiping vomit from her chin with the back of her hand, Meredith croaks out, "You tell anyone ever —" Cristina nods.

* * *

Although Meredith had tried her best to look anywhere but at Dr. Shepherd, he'd caught her eye in the boardroom earlier as he'd asked the interns for help with Katie's case. A flicker of something had passed between them, and Meredith looked at her hands, listening to his incentive of scrubbing in to Katie's surgery, whatever that turned out to be.

Cristina perks up when they cross paths in the I.C.U an hour later, moving to walk beside her. No trace of judgement from the night before in her voice when she proposes they work together on trying to find the cause of Katie's seizures.

"If we find the answer we have a fifty-fifty chance of scrubbing in."

Meredith nods. "I'll work with you, but I don't want in on the surgery. You can have it."

Cristina looks shocked. "Are you kidding? It's the biggest opportunity any intern will ever get!"

"I almost let that girl die last night," Meredith reminds her. "I'm the last person that should be on Shepherd's surgery. I wish I wasn't even on the case." Once inside the elevator, she presses '4' for the research library.

"What, because you ran your first code and froze up? I could see from the hallway. You did better than O'Malley."

"And Shepherd keeps giving me this look," Meredith confides as the elevator descends. "Like he's undressing me with his eyes, but he also wants me to pull my act together."

Cristina snorts. "Well, pull your act together. Find out what causes Katie's seizures, then tell Shepherd to undress someone else with his eyes."

Meredith grants her an amused smile, but her stomach turns in a knot.

* * *

The library is blissfully silent. She's heard enough beeping and blood pressure cuffs deflating in the past day to power a small army. Other interns are poring over journals and textbooks, the prospect of scrubbing in shining like a far-off prize ahead of them. The guy who'd asked her out at the mixer is sleeping in the next aisle, using his bunched up coat as a pillow. In front of her, Cristina continues to flip pages, Meredith can almost see her mind jumping from one possible explanation to another.

"Okay, so she doesn't have anoxia, chronic renal failure, or acidosis," Cristina says absently. "It's not a tumor, because her C.T's clean."

"What about infection?" Meredith proposes, grasping at straws now.

Cristina flips through Katie's chart. "No," she says. "There's no white count, and she has no C.T lesions, no fevers, nothing in her spinal tap." Meredith remembers the spinal tap well. It was the second one Katie had had to undergo, a repeat of the test done at the hospital in Spokane. Meredith had discovered just how colorful Katie's vocabulary could get when she was in pain. "What about an aneurism?"

Meredith shakes her head. "No blood on the C.T, and no headaches." Although Katie herself was one hell of a headache.

Cristina sighed. "Okay. There's no drug use, no pregnancy, no trauma."

"We're out of answers," Meredith says, standing to put a medical journal back on the shelf. "What if no one comes up with anything?"

"You mean what if she dies?"

"Yeah!" Meredith sits down and twists her fingers together nervously.

"Well, this is gonna sound really bad, but I really wanted that surgery," Cristina says.

A moment passes, and Meredith looks out the window. Another sunny day in Seattle. Only she doesn't feel too sunny. She feels like her feet are about to fall off, and she could really use a shower. "She's just never gonna get the chance to turn into a person. The sum total of her existence will be winning 'Miss Teen Whatever'. You know what her pageant talent is?"

Cristina raises her eyebrows. "They have talent?"

She hides a smile. "Rhythmic gymnastics."

Cristina snorts. "Oh, come on."

"What is rhythmic gymnastics?" Meredith asks, the words coming out in a jumble. "I can't even say it, I don't know what it is." She thinks back to what Katie had said about the ribbon. Tripping over her ribbon.

"I think it's something with a ball, and —" Meredith isn't listening. She stands up, excited. She's not going to find the answer to this question inside a medical journal or a textbook. "What? Meredith, what?"

"Get up. Come on. I have an idea," Meredith says, her mind spinning with the possibility. "We need to find Shepherd."

* * *

Hurrying around the hospital in search of Dr. Shepherd, Meredith relays Katie's fall to Cristina, who begins to share her excitement. This could be the answer. It's a stretch, but it's not impossible. They finally find him walking into an elevator on the third floor. Cristina rushes forward while Meredith hangs back.

"Dr. Shepherd, just one moment," Cristina calls. He turns, and there's that look again, that instant where their eyes meet and Meredith can't tell what he's thinking. Shepherd focuses on Cristina. "Katie competes in beauty pageants," she begins.

"I know that," Shepherd says, "but we have to save her life, anyway."

Cristina plows on. "She has no headaches, no neck pain, her C.T is clean." The elevator doors begin to close, and she pushes them back. "There's no medical proof of an aneurism, but what if she has an aneurism, anyway."

Shepherd shakes his head. "There are no indicators."

"She twisted her ankle practicing for the pageant," Cristina persists, pushing the doors back again.

"Okay, I appreciate you trying to help," Shepherd says, "but —"

Meredith stepped forward. "She fell," she says calmly. Shepherd looks at her. "When she twisted her ankle, she fell."

"It was no big deal, not even a bump on the head," Cristina continued. "She iced her ankle, got right back up, and everything was fine. It was a fall so minor, that her doctor didn't even think to mention it when I was taking her history, but she did fall."

Shepherd smiles indulgently. "You know what the chance is that a minor fall could burst an aneurism?" he asks. "One in a million. Literally!" The elevator doors close, and Meredith and Cristina turn away, deterred but not defeated. Suddenly, the elevator dings and the doors open. He looks from one to the other. "Let's go," Shepherd says, stepping out of the elevator.

Cristina and Meredith, surprised, look to him. "Go where?"

"To find out if Katie's one in a million."

They turn and follow him, exchanging an excited look.

* * *

They all watch the screen intently as Katie's brain is scanned yet again, the results coming back slowly. The nerves in her brain look like thin snakes, or a child's wavy scribble. Meredith sneaks a look at Shepherd while he leans in to inspect the scan, then pushes down the feeling rising in her chest, squashes it with one aching foot.

"I'll be damned," he says softly.

The technician points to a fuzzy patch to the left of the screen. "There it is." Meredith and Cristina lean forward slightly, both unfamiliar with reading an angiogram.

"It's minute, but it's there," Shepherd continues. "It's a subarachnoid hemorrhage." She knows what that means. "She's bleeding into her brain." He straightens up, quiet pride showing in his eyes. The interns look at each other, almost unable to believe it. "Let's go tell the parents."

He walks through them, and they follow behind down to the first floor. "She could have gone through her entire life without it ever being a problem. One tap in the right spot…"

"And it exploded," Cristina interjects.

"Exactly. And now I can fix it," he pauses, and Meredith feels the slight pressure of his palm on her back. "You two did great work. I would love to stay and kiss your asses, but I've got to tell Katie's parents she's having surgery," he asks for Katie's chart and is handed it by a woman in purple scrubs sitting behind a rounded desk. Cristina moves forward.

"Uh, Dr. Shepherd, you said that you'd pick someone to scrub in if we helped?" she reminds, the want clear in her voice.

He nods. "Oh. Yes. Right," he looks over the chart. "I'm sorry, I can't take you both. It's gonna be a full house," he looks to Meredith. "Grey, I'll see you in O.R this afternoon."

There is a pause, and Meredith knows she should step forward, give the surgery to Cristina, but something stops her. It's not the surgery, it's not about the opportunity. It's Katie Bryce, the silly young pageant queen. Thrashing in bed, pushing in drugs, watching the heart monitor flatline and then begin again. She'd helped save this young girl's life. Meredith looks at Shepherd and finds that despite the rush in her chest, the strange feeling she gets when he looks at her, this is someone she trusts. He'll fix Katie. And this afternoon maybe, just maybe, standing in that O.R, Meredith will feel like a real doctor. _I am a doctor, I am a doctor, I am a doctor._

Cristina looks at her, disbelief clouding her large, dark eyes.

* * *

Meredith walks into Katie's room to find Dr. Shepherd shaving the girl's head. "I promised I'd make her look cool," he explains. "Apparently being a bald beauty queen is the worst thing that happened in the history of the world." He turns the razor off and the room falls quiet. He looks up at Meredith.

"You should ask Cristina to do the surgery. She really wants it," Meredith says, her hands hiding in the pockets of her coat.

Shepherd looks at her seriously. "You're Katie's doctor. And on your first day, with very little training, you helped save her life," he says. "You earned the right to follow her case through to the finish."

Meredith dips her eyes to her shoes. "I owe you an apology," Shepherd says, and she looks up. "You did everything you could when Katie coded on that table last night. It was textbook," he looks her directly in the eyes. "Every time a patient codes there's a moment when you freeze. It's terrifying every single time. They don't tell you that in med school. You find out for yourself."

She feels tears creeping up behind her eyes, but she schools them. Her eyes shine green, rimmed with red. "I had just lost a patient in surgery when they paged me," he continues, not looking at her. "Simple procedure, but we lost him." He pauses, choosing his next words carefully. "Nothing can prepare you for that, either. For losing a patient. I took it out on you, and I'm sorry."

Meredith doesn't say anything, but she feels her shoulders relax. Shepherd looks up at her and smiles, turning on the razor again. "See you in surgery, Grey."

* * *

After pulling her hair up and scrubbing her arms up to the elbows, Meredith walks into the O.R. It feels like a stage, like she's won a front row seat to the opening night of a play. She sees Katie, already asleep and prepped for the surgery. No idea of the performances about to take place around her.

"All right, everybody," Dr. Shepherd says in his confident voice. "It's a beautiful night to save lives." He looks at the team of assembled people he'll be working with and Meredith can see the crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiles behind his mask. "Let's have some fun."

Meredith hangs back, sneaking peeks when she can, the pain in her feet gone and forgotten when she stands on tip-toe to try and get a closer look. Hours pass, and they move with quiet efficiency. Shepherd narrates his work, and Meredith sees the two residents absorbing the surgery and assisting when asked. It is all carefully orchestrated, but there's always the potential for something to go wrong.

When he says, "Come over here, Grey. Take a look," Meredith thinks he's kidding. She's been standing practically glued to the wall for the past four hours, so when he motions with a nod of his head for her to come stand and watch him clip the aneurism, Meredith feels a bit undeserving. She looks up at Cristina, sitting in the gallery with her arms crossed, and something passes between them. _Go on. You earned this._

Meredith moves through the assisting surgeons and scrub nurses. He nods to the magnifier and she approaches it, looking through into Katie's brain. It is humbling, she realizes with a lurch, and the wonder of it all fills her up to bursting. Forty-eight hours ago she had woken up on the floor of her bathroom. Now she is staring into a brain, the very essence of what makes us a person. How incredible, she thinks, inhaling sharply. Shepherd looks at her, at her grey-green eyes, wide with wonder. He turns back to finish clipping the aneurism, and Meredith looks at him with a gaze full of trust. Masks hide their mouths, but they can see each other's smiles.

* * *

Sitting down feels wrong, somehow. She has aged a hundred years since she entered that operating room six hours earlier, feels older and wiser. Cristina finds Meredith slouched in an uncomfortable chair by the door to the surgical floor, probably still looking dazed.

"It was good surgery," she says as a peace offering.

Meredith nods tiredly. "Yeah."

Cristina takes a seat beside her, splaying her legs out and sighing. "We don't have to do that thing where I say something, and then you say something, and somebody cries, and there's, like, a moment."

"Yuck," Meredith agrees with a lighthearted smile.

"Good." Cristina looks at her. "You should get some sleep. You look like crap."

Meredith smiles again. "I look better than you."

Her friend shakes her head. "That's not possible." Cristina gets up and walks down the hallway at a slow pace, their first shift over.

As she walks away the door opens again and Meredith looks to see Dr. Shepherd walk out, looking exhausted but pleased. A successful surgery, this time. He removes his scrub cap and reaches behind the nurses desk to grab a pencil. Meredith watches him openly.

"That was amazing," she says, awe running through her veins.

Shepherd looks at her, smiles. He remembers observing his first surgery, the way he'd felt after. It had been a kidney transplant, one person giving life to another. She looks tired but beautiful in a secret way. So much hidden in her delicate features.

"You practice on cadavers, you observe, and you think you know what you're gonna feel like, standing over that table, but…" Meredith searches for the right word, and uses the first one that comes into her head, "that was such a high." Shepherd looks again at the small girl in front of him, a mind ready and eager to be sculpted. "I don't know why anybody does drugs," she says in her slightly scratchy, exhausted intern voice.

He nods. "Yeah."

Meredith dips her eyes and strawberry-blonde hair falls around her head. "Yeah."

As he walks away to tell Katie's parents the outcome of the surgery, Shepherd thinks about the small intern in her light blue scrubs sitting in that hard chair made for worried parents. He doesn't know her first name, but her last name holds all he needs in its four letters. The color of her eyes looking at him, the precious shade that occurs when green meets grey, ocean in winter.

* * *

 **A/N 2** : So, should I keep going with this whacky idea? Is it boring?


	2. Electric Feel

**A/N:** Thanks for the feedback on the first chapter! Again, much of the dialogue here is borrowed from the show. I promise, this story will move away from the script as it continues on. I just need to set the scene. I'm glad you all seemed to like chapter one, hopefully you'll like this chapter. Let me know.

Electric Feel: Chapter II

There had been something different about this morning, Meredith had felt it on the way to work. She'd driven with the front windows down, welcoming October's first raw bite. Since her first shift two weeks ago she'd bought a new pair of tennis shoes and broken them in, but this morning she opts for flats on the way to work. She so rarely gets to look like anything but a doctor, now. Since Katie Bryce's case, the closest Meredith has gotten to the O.R is hearing the word 'surgery'. The hospital has become easier to navigate, easier to jump from I.C.U to the E.R in a flash. No more gnawing fingernails in elevators looking for the right floor, but there still isn't enough time to squeeze into O.R galleries.

For breakfast Meredith has a latte and a trauma case. The rape victim is surrounded by nurses. Vultures circling fresh prey. This woman had fought back, as evidenced by the many lacerations over her body, the blood under her nails. Meredith picks up her chart as the rape kit is performed, the patient stripped, cleaned, examined even in her unconscious state. Across the room, her clothing is being bagged as evidence of the crime. Meredith stops with the chart in her hands, momentarily freezes.

The shoes. Meredith's shoes.

They had been a little too wide, and her feet had slipped around inside them. When Meredith realizes that the assault must have taken place just around the time she'd left the house that morning, wearing the same shoes, it rattles her. She looks away from the shoes and down at the woman's chart, reads the woman's name.

Allison. Her name is Allison.

* * *

Draped as they are in the O.R, barely visible, it's easy to not think of patients as people. Easy to see them as a bleeding brain, a wounded heart, a dark lung in need of help. Today, Meredith stands off to the side, looking on. Burke and Shepherd work, discussing the patient's prospects.

"Allison," Meredith interrupts, and many faces turn towards her. "Her name…is Allison." For a moment, Shepherd think she might know the patient, but then he realizes what they've all been doing. Referring to Allison as if she weren't there at all. Just a battered body in need of repair.

Burke stands up a little straighter. "I think I might have found the cause of our rupture." He leans down and searches again, pulling up a torn hunk of thick flesh. "Does anyone know what this is?" he asks.

Meredith tilts her head, narrows her eyes to try and see it more clearly, then inhales in disbelief. "Oh, my God."

"What?" Burke asks, still holding the mangled object. "Spit it out, Grey." Shepherd looks up from his own work, watching Meredith. The intern's eyes crinkle at the corners, a smile threatening to escape behind her mask.

"She bit it off."

Burke furrows his brows. "Bit off what?"

Meredith purses her lips. "That's h-his," she points with a delicate hand. "His -penis. She bit off his penis." Burke drops the offending object into a pan and tries to compose himself. Meredith crosses her arms and smirks.

* * *

Allison lies unconscious in her hospital bed after the surgery, fighting quietly. Meredith sits beside her, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. She'd turned off the lights but kept the bedside lamp on, bathing the room in a soft glow. Easier to wake up to.

Allison's bare feet are covered by sheets and blankets, but Meredith can't stop thinking about her shoes. She wonders if they'd been too wide on Allison, as well. There had been blood on the shoes -warpaint. The nurses have washed Allison back to soft flesh and brown hair. Meredith thinks of the shoes in her locker. She knows she'll never wear them again.

They'd visited the babies, she and George. She looks again to Allison, thinks how ordinary it is for a human to grow from an infant to an adult. How pure and blissfully unaware of the world those babies had been. To go from there to here. Allison's eyes flutter behind her eyelids, but she doesn't wake.

Meredith looks to the door as Shepherd appears, still wearing his scrub cap. He looks at her, curled over in the chair with the red cooler by her feet. "You have to carry it around with you?"

She nods and taps the cooler with her foot. "Until the police arrive to collect the evidence, I am the guardian of a penis."

Shepherd snorts, then begins to check Allison's eyes. "Sooner or later the guy that did this is going to seek medical attention," he says, standing back up. "And when he does, that's gonna nail him."

Meredith sighs and leans back in the chair. He's never seen her look so melancholic, her eyes hold no spark today. "Where is her family?"

"Doesn't have any," Shepherd says, sitting in another chair against the wall; he watches as a gentle shadow passes through her features.

"No siblings?"

He shakes his head. "No. Both parents are dead." He runs a hand over his face tiredly. "She just moved to Seattle three weeks ago. Welcome to the city."

Meredith looks back at Allison, fingers the cheap hospital blanket by the woman's hand.

"Are you okay, Grey?"

She doesn't nod or shake her head, just continues to look at Allison. She knows there's probably other things she should be doing, but Meredith can't seem to pull herself away.

"Do you know her? Is she your friend?" he presses quietly.

"No," Meredith says, finally looking back at him. She always looks him directly in the eye, her pupils finding his and holding them, dilating. It's disarming. No one's ever done that to him for more than a few seconds. "No, I don't know her." She taps the cooler again with her toes, looks down. She seems to be considering something, then looks back up at Shepherd. "We have the same shoes. Allison was wearing the same shoes I wore to work this morning," she twists her fingers lightly in her lap. "I never wear them, but today I did. It's just, it's stupid, but…I don't know. And she has no one, but we wore the same shoes this morning."

Shepherd nods. "Well, Allison's prognosis is good. She has a good chance of waking up in the next couple days. The damage wasn't as extensive inside as it looks on the outside."

Meredith looks at him, so much trust in those soft grey eyes. She clears her throat and picks up the red cooler. "I —I have to do something," she says. "I have to go."

Shepherd nods. "I'll sit with her," he says, and Meredith grants him a small smile of gratitude. "That way she'll have someone when she wakes up."

Meredith walks past him, then looks back at Allison. "Yeah," she says softly.

* * *

The next morning, early, after rounds, Meredith returns to visit Allison, drawn like a moth to the flickering flame of a lantern. Shepherd is sitting by the foot of her bed, a laptop propped up in front of him. He looks up as Meredith walks in the room, still toting the red cooler in one hand. She misses his smile as she approaches Allison's bed.

"How is she?" Meredith asks, eyes moving over her 7M twin.

"No change," Shepherd reports.

"Have you been here all night?" she asks, thinking about her own return home last night. The shoes now reside in the farthest corner of her dusty closet. She'd grabbed four hours of sleep.

"Mm-hmm." He seems absorbed in research. "You know, I have four sisters," he says, looking up to Meredith. "Very girly, tons of kids. If I was in a coma they'd all be here." Allison's remains perfectly still. "I'd want them here."

Meredith does something uncharacteristic, but she's already emotionally involved in this case, more than she'd like to be. She takes Allison's fragile, mostly uninjured right hand in her own, running a thumb over the top of it, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Having no one?" he continues, watching her. "I can't imagine that."

Meredith runs her thumb over the top of Allison's hand again. This brave woman wears the same size shoe that she does, probably the same size in clothes. Similar build and height. "I can," she says.

"What are you talking about?" Shepherd says, almost scoffing. "What about your mother?" Meredith turns her eyes away from Allison, picks up her chart from the end of her bed and opens it. Brown eyes.

"She'd be here, ordering all the surgeons around," Shepherd continues. "She'd fly these cowboys in from Prague to do these amazing medical procedures."

Meredith nods. "That's true," she admits. "I do have my mother." The words feel heavy in her mouth, she wishes they didn't. "But she doesn't have anyone. Allison doesn't have anyone."

"She has you," Shepherd says gently. "You've been there for her since she was brought here."

Moments later, Allison flatlines, her brain staging rebellion, and Shepherd rushes her to the operating room. There isn't time for unnecessary personnel to scrub in, this isn't an opportunity for teaching. So, Meredith waits anxiously outside the operating room, sitting against the wall in the hallway with her knees drawn to her chest, the red cooler beside her. After hours of waiting, ignoring pages to patients she knows can be helped by other interns, ignoring the grumble in her stomach that she can't pinpoint as worry or hunger, Shepherd finally emerges. He tears off his scrub cap, sighs with exhaustion.

"I, uh, had to leave her skull flap off," he explains, "until the pressure in her brain goes down."

Meredith struggles to get up, and Shepherd offers her a hand, pulling her to her feet. She fixes him with her now-familiar intense stare. "She's not gonna make it, is she?"

"She's gonna be fine," he says, but there's not as much confidence as she'd like behind his words.

Meredith continues to look at him. " _If_ she ever wakes up."

He nods. "If she ever wakes up." Meredith hides her eyes, and he tips her chin up with a finger. "Hey," he says. "Allison's a fighter. She's gonna make it, Grey."

* * *

The rapist arrives at the hospital that afternoon, branded as a criminal by his own blood. Meredith tightens her hold on the red cooler as she walks up to Allison's room in the I.C.U. Shepherd isn't there, probably got called into a surgery. She hadn't expected him to sit with her all day. Meredith takes a chair beside Allison, the cooler again by her feet. Twisted sisters.

Allison's hand is cool when Meredith takes it in hers. The feel of a coma. Real warmth, the heat of feeling, disappears when we aren't awake to make any.

"The pressure in her brain's gone down," a nurse says softly, walking to the other side of Allison's bed and taking her vitals. They've removed the intubation tube, Allison's breathing on her own. "Dr. Shepherd was able to complete the surgery. She's doing a lot better." He makes a note in the chart, then looks at Meredith. "I heard you all got the guy."

Meredith nods. "We did."

The nurse closes Allison's chart and leans on one hip. "How's he doing?"

"Stable, for now," Meredith responds. "Allison kicked his ass."

"He'd better enjoy his last few moments of freedom, then." He nods at Meredith. "Allison's gonna be okay, you know."

Meredith looks at her again -her battered face, her purpled eye sockets. "I know," she says. "I know."

There is a silence, then she can hear the rustle of the nurse leaving. Exhausted, Meredith rests her head on the side of the bed, dares herself to close her eyes, if only for a moment. She is just on the edge of sleep when she feels a light twitch in her palm. Her eyes fly open and focus on the bruised hand cradled in hers. Allison's fingertips tickle her life line again and Meredith looks to her face, watches as her eyes blink open slowly, carefully. Brown eyes.

"Allison?" she asks, sitting up. A hollow beat is recorded on the cardiac monitor as Allison struggles to catch her bearings. "Can you hear me?"

Allison knits her eyebrows. "Mom?" she breathes. "Mom? Is that you?" Her voice hitches and she tries to move, confused by the wires woven over and around her. "What happened? Where am I?"

Meredith tries to calm her. "Allison, I'm a doctor. My name is Meredith," she says, her tone soothing. "You're in the hospital."

Allison shifts her eyes, the motion evidently causing her pain. Brown irises lock with grey. "You don't look like a doctor," she observes, calming. There is nothing condescending in her tone. "Could you call my mother for me?"

Meredith feels her heart contract, knowing that, were she in the same situation as Allison, a phone call to her mother would yield no comfort; the Alzheimer's has progressed too far. She squeezes Allison's palm again. "Allison, I can't call your mom."

Her eyes change. As if an artist had dipped their dark, paint-heavy brush in clouded water. Then Allison pulls her hand out of Meredith's. "Oh," she says, her voice close to breaking. "Am I going to be okay?"

Meredith smiles a soft smile. "Yes," she says. "You're going to be fine. Just fine."

* * *

She leaves the room for water, or at least that's what she tells herself. Allison's fallen asleep again, having become more talkative as the minutes had gone by. She'd told Meredith a little about the attack in the park; detached, as if it had happened to someone else. Then, after an hour, Allison had drifted off, and Meredith had taken it as an excuse to leave the room, get some air.

She finds a stairway, and leans against the wall, watching the sun rise through rain, breathing deeply. What kind of doctor runs away from their patients? First Katie, now Allison.

The door opens and Shepherd, of all people, walks in. He stops when he sees her. "There you are," he says, smiling. "Come on, the nurse just paged me. Allison woke up." He takes her elbow, but Meredith pulls free.

"I know," she says.

He looks at her, his smile fading. "You know? What do you mean, you know?"

Meredith finds his eyes. "I was there, when she woke up. We talked for a little while, then she fell asleep again."

He sighs. "Why didn't you page me?"

Meredith shakes her head, looking past him at the shy morning sky. "She asked for her mother. When she woke up, she thought I was her mother."

Shepherd shrugs. "A lot of comatose patients wake up and don't remember the specifics of their past. She probably didn't remember that her mom had died."

"Yeah," Meredith concedes. "I just wish she had someone, you know. A person."

Shepherd opens the door and Meredith walks through it. "'A person'?"

She shakes her head again. "Never mind."

They reach Allison's room and enter together. Shepherd smiles. "Welcome back." Allison searches for Meredith.

"Oh, good," she says. "I thought you'd gone away."

* * *

The open air of night is startling to her as she walks out of the hospital at the end of her shift. It seems that the world should not be this crisp, this clear. She's gotten used to it -the beep beep, the blue and green and white, the muted air of a hospital. The tips of Meredith's fingers peek out from the long sleeves of her coat as she flexes her hands, finally free of the red cooler. Footsteps sound behind her.

"Grey," Shepherd says, slightly out of breath.

She nods. "Yes?"

He smiles at her. "Feels good, right?"

Meredith pulls her coat, left unbuttoned, tighter around her, then looks up at him. "Hmm?"

The October breeze weaves between them. Out of the corner of her eye she can see the strategically planted trees by the parking lot bend, their dampened leaves brushing. The precipice of winter.

"Allison woke up," he says.

Meredith smiles softly. "She did."

"It feels good when the good guys win." He smiles. She quirks a brow.

"So, we're the good guys?"

Shepherd laughs. "Well, you're a good girl, but yes," he nods. "Allison's awake, the bad guy's on his way to prison, it's-"

"-A beautiful night to save lives," Meredith finishes. Her eyes dance, yet he finds her expression difficult to read. After a moment, he tilts his head.

"You want to get a drink? To celebrate?"

 _"You want to get a drink, Meredith?" he asks. "Come on, it's just a drink. I can be a good boy."_

 _Meredith smiles, twirls his tie, thinks -'what if I don't want to be a good girl?'. "Sure," she whispers. "Just a drink."_

"Grey?" Shepherd asks, then seems embarrassed. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

Meredith focuses on Shepherd. "Oh! No. I'm sorry. What?"

He gives her a smile as he walks away; but it is not one of the slightly amused, friendly smiles she's received from him in the past. A sad smile. "Never mind," he says. "Enjoy your evening."

Meredith's cheeks feel chapped, and her nose is numb. "I -you, too," she offers back, trying to pick up the pieces to whatever puzzle they'd been solving.

Cristina jogs to catch up with her, then scoffs. "Oh, man, you totally blew it."

Meredith's brows knit together. "What do you mean?"

"McDreamy. He has it bad." She arranges her curly hair so it'll fit under her motorcycle helmet.

"What? No, he doesn't. I don't even think he knows my first name."

Cristina laughs. "Come on. Don't be naïve. It doesn't look good on you."

* * *

Thank God for the dark, clouded sky. The absence of light. She feels sick, feels the churning wheels of the past invading the present. Images rush back to her in a wave of regret as she sits in her car, shivering. The keys in the ignition remain unturned. Images blurred at the edges. Monet's blind lilies. She swore she'd never let it happen again.

 _"Come on, it's just a drink."_

I can be a good girl. I can have just one drink, not end up entwined with my teacher in a double-helix, a lover's knot on lavender sheets. I can be a good girl.

* * *

 **A/N 2:** So...here we go!


	3. Balance

**A/N:** Thanks for the feedback on the last chapter. I figured I'd either upload this chapter in two parts, or just separate them in one chapter. I think it's better this way. Let me know what you think! Your feedback really helps me out!

Chapter III: Balance (Part I)

The fabric of the yellow trauma gown Meredith puts on over her scrubs is thin -like a strip of flesh peeled off a sunburnt shoulder. Today, the E.R reminds her of a Saturday fish market; gurneys like ice-laden trays heavy with flayed salmon, with cod. Only there are no fish here. Cyclists torn and broken by falls on asphalt, all sorts of carnage.

The 'Dead Baby' bike race.

"Oh!" Cristina exclaims upon entering the Emergency Room, the other interns trailing her. "It's like candy, but with blood, which is _so_ much better!"

* * *

Meredith fights with Alex over a patient with bicycle spokes poking out from his abdomen. Without proper care and extraction of the metal spokes the man's abdomen will become inflamed with infection. Meredith tries to explain this to Alex, frustrated over his lack of thought as he pulls the spokes out at direct angles according to the man's wishes.

After meticulously cleaning the left side of the man, 'Viper''s, abdomen, she begins to suture the wound closed. A sly smile decorates his face as he watches her. And, even without something to relieve the pain, Viper still manages to keep up a conversation.

"You've got a nice touch," he tells her as she sews flesh together. "And, by the way, you are a rockin' babe."

Meredith gives him her best disapproving smirk. "Seriously -do you actually think you have a shot here?"

"I'd like to think I've got a shot anywhere, Blondie," he counters, grinning.

"Look," Meredith says, her tone turning serious. "You've really got to let me take you for some tests. You could have internal bleeding."

He shakes his head and sighs. "No, thank you. I've got a race to get back to."

She scoffs, looking up from her work. "Why? You can't win now, anyway."

"Doesn't mean I can't cross that finish line," Viper says wistfully. "There's a party at the end of the finish line." He leans in closely to whisper in her ear. "You wanna meet me there?"

"One test," Meredith offers. "A C.T. I'll have you out of here in an hour."

"Can't do it. Gotta go." Viper looks at his wound and grins wickedly to himself, seeming proud of the scars.

She ties the last suture neatly and snaps her gloves off. "Okay. Well, you realize that you're leaving against medical advice and that I strongly urge you to stay?"

He gestures toward Alex, who is probably sending another injured cyclist on their way without so much as cleaning around an open wound. "The frat guy said I could go!"

Meredith purses her lips. "The 'frat guy' is an ass."

Viper grins, and she hands him an A.M.A form, unamused. He signs with a messy wave of his hand, kisses her, and heads out the door, still smiling. From outside the trauma room window, she sees Alex looking at her. She clears her throat, strips the exam table, and walks out, straightening her trauma gown.

* * *

"That wasn't what it looked like," Meredith says, meeting Alex at the nurses' desk and pulling out a new patient chart.

Alex smirks and looks her up and down. "Hey, if you're into making out in trauma rooms, I'm all for it." He taps her chart with a pen. "So, what do you say? Let's get it on."

She raises an eyebrow and stares at him. "What is it with you? Why can't you just do your job and not make everything a dirty game?"

He chuckles. "What is it with _you_? Never wanting to have any fun on the side?"

Meredith gasps incredulously. "' _Fun on the side_ '?"

Alex nods, leaning against the desk, ignoring the swarm of patients.

"Because this," Meredith gestures in front of them, "is a job, and those are patients. So grab a damn chart, find a patient, and leave me alone."

Her eyes widen as she sees Shepherd walk between gurneys, headed for a trauma room for a consult, and Alex sees only the twirl of her blonde ponytail as Meredith turns and walks off to find her new patient.

* * *

Throughout the day she cleans wounds and sutures, wheels patients for X-rays, checks for concussions, and fights the urge to kick Alex Karev. He rushes through patient after patient and hands off work to nurses. She'd known someone like him in college, an idiot who only cared about themselves.

 _"_ _Idiots weave their own webs of disaster,"_ her mother had once said. A rare evening of reflection over tea. Meredith was sixteen and astonished that her mother was speaking to her, however indirectly. They were drinking tea -oolong. Meredith hated the taste but drank it, anyway. _"I'm constantly picking up the pieces."_ A shattered glass, Meredith thought, like the one she'd accidentally broken that morning, although her mother hadn't been there to see it. _"Anderson butchered a heart today. I had to go in and fix the damn thing."_

Ellis glanced at her daughter and pursed her lips. _"Don't be an idiot, Meredith,"_ she said _. "Stop all this talk of medical school."_

 _"_ _But-"_

Her mother shook her head, seeming amused at the idea. _"You don't have what it takes, Meredith."_ She took a sip of tea and set the fragile cup down on the counter. _"In order to be a real surgeon you have to be intelligent enough to break the rules, sometimes. Go outside the lines."_

Meredith looked at her mother. She'd finished her tea, but she kept the cup wrapped in her hands. It still held heat from the hot water, and warmed her thin fingers. She was afraid to speak, to move even, afraid to break the moment into a thousand pieces. More desperate for her mother's attention and approval than she ever let on, Meredith didn't care if Ellis thought she'd never make it.

 _"_ _I think I can do it, Mom,"_ she said.

Ellis smiled sadly to herself, then looked at her daughter, her light eyes taking in Meredith's face -the high cheeks, full mouth, her own sharp nose. _"No,"_ she said. Her voice, calm, left no room for argument. _"You have too much feeling inside you. To clean up after idiots you need to know the world with your head, not your heart."_

Meredith finally set down her china cup. There was some flower on the side of it. A nasturtium, she would learn later. _"You can't use both?"_

Ellis shook her head and, for an instant, looked somewhat regretful. _"Never. It would be too dangerous."_

* * *

She spends the day avoiding Shepherd as she has been for the past week, feeling childish. When they cross paths in the hallways he always brightens at the sight of her. Meredith tries to remain neutral, or carefully absorbed in a blank notebook. The conversation in the parking lot could have been a blessing in disguise. Creating a chasm.

By the end of the day, she can't take it any more. Karev is parading around like he owns the place, all because he got to scrub in on a surgery.

"God, I smell good!" he exclaims, walking into the locker room. Meredith has just finished changing out of her scrubs and is fantasizing about sleep and silence. "You know what it is?" he asks. "It's the smell of open-heart surgery." He sniffs himself. "It's awesome. It is _awesome_. You gotta smell me."

"I do not want to smell you."

Alex scoffs. "Oh, yes, you do," he murmurs, moving behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

Meredith spins to face him. "You have got to be kidding me!" She grabs his shirt and backs them up so he slams into his own locker. "Okay, I have more important things to deal with than you. I'm trying to be a _doctor_ , here. You wanna act like a little frat-boy bitch? That's fine. You wanna take credit for your saves and everybody else's? That's fine, too. Just stay outta my face." She grabs his face and looks him in the eyes. "And for the record, you smell like shit!"

When Shepherd enters the locker room, having heard some commotion from the hallway, Meredith stops emptying her locker into her bag and lowers her shoulders, sighs in defeat. Caught again with her emotions out of control. He always seems to be there when she doesn't want him to see her, yet wants him desperately.

"She attacked me!" Karev says, gesturing toward Meredith, defending himself.

Meredith drops her bag on the floor and spins again, grabbing the fabric of Karev's scrub top and scrunching it tight in anger.

"Grey!" Shepherd stops her before she can do any damage, and Karev leaves them, back to his misdiagnosed E.R patients, a smirk still painted across his face.

* * *

Alone in the locker room, Shepherd looks at Meredith. She looks contemplative, as if searching inside herself for some half-forgotten thought.

"What?" His hair is ruffled like the Little Prince from hours kept underneath his scrub cap.

His eyes on her, even as she ungracefully pulls her hair out of the collar of her coat, are clear and blue. No resentment from the awkward night last Friday. "Nothing," Meredith says. Shepherd doesn't need to smile for her to know that finding her yelling at Karev to be the highlight of his evening. She bites the inside of her cheek, takes a deep breath, and walks to the door, past him. He smells comforting -like coffee, like cedar. "Just...nothing."

* * *

The air is thick in her throat like oil as Meredith leaves the hospital, and a heavy night wind rushes past her open window on the drive home. Feels like a storm, she thinks. Yes, please.

 _You have too much feeling inside you._

Oh, feeling. Meredith knows all about feeling. How it wears you from the inside out. How poisonous it is to show something of yourself to another, and never again have it back. How fear feels. She knows that, too. What it is to fear for yourself, what it is to fear for another. The beat of a heart after reviving a patient. _That_ feeling. How it feels to look inside a human brain. To feel like Gods. _That_ feeling.

She hadn't expected she would ever feel this... _much_.

* * *

Chapter III: Balance (Part II)

"I'm telling you, cutting is like...this _drug_...it's, like, I feel like I could just jump off the Space Needle right now and I wouldn't even touch the ground," Cristina steals a section from the tangerine Meredith is eating at their lunch table.

"Please, don't do that," Meredith says. "I will be all alone in the E.R with Alex Karev, sewing up cyclists until the end of time."

"That," Cristina says, "is a circle of hell."

"Yesterday I stitched up a guy named 'Viper' after Alex ripped out five bicycle spokes with his bare hands."

Cristina smiled. "Seriously? Bicycle spokes?"

"Cristina!" Meredith exclaimed. "Also, Shepherd keeps smoldering me with his eyes."

"Huh?" Cristina looks up from her medical journal, chokes on her water, and steals another slice of fruit. "Is that what they're calling it now?"

Meredith groans, her head in her hands.

* * *

In the E.R after lunch, Meredith spies Viper sitting in the waiting room. "What's Viper doing here?" she asks a 'Can't Be Bothered' Karev, although he seems somewhat chastised after their encounter in the locker room.

"Probably crashed his bike. Again," Karev sighs, not looking up from the chart he's currently working on.

"How long has he been waiting?"

Karev clicks his tongue. "Don't know. I've been busy on _real_ cases. He's all yours."

The cyclist is curled over his abdomen in the same place that the spokes had been. A grimace crosses his face, and Viper looks up as Meredith approaches. "Viper?" She hurries when he seems close to vomiting. "Are you okay?!"

He stands up, reaches toward her, and collapses on the floor before she can catch him. Blood froths from his mouth like bubbling lava, and his abdomen is distended and horribly infected. Meredith pulls the closest gurney into the waiting area, calls for a nurse's help, and lifts him into it. He is limp and heavy -the weight of a human body, however lean it may appear, is always surprising. We carry ourselves upright so confidently that it is strange when we fall.

Meredith swings a leg over the gurney and climbs on, straddling the man while maintaining pressure on his swollen abdomen. "Call the O.R., tell them we're coming," she tells a nearby nurse. "And page Dr. Bailey." She glances at Alex, frozen to the spot. "Alex, come on." When he doesn't move Meredith resorts to raising her voice. "Alex, push the damn gurney!"

Alex moves forward, taking control of the gurney with her on it, and directs them toward an elevator, calling ahead for someone to hold the doors. He watches Meredith, how her hands are steady and strong, the blood on her scrubs, decorating her neck and cheek. When they reach the O.R. floor, Alex pushes the gurney out and follows the guide of an O.R. nurse into the first room. Meredith is helped off the patient and told to scrub in while Alex gets chewed out by Bailey.

* * *

When Meredith returns, relative calm has been restored to the operating room. Dr. Bailey has prepped the patient for an emergency surgery, and Meredith stands across from her resident, asked to narrate the procedure as it progresses, to show off what books have taught her supple mind.

"Dr. Shepherd, why are you in my O.R. gallery and not looking at someone's scrap-metal brain?" Bailey asks suddenly, without even glancing up at the gallery.

There is a sound as someone clears their throat. "Dr. Bailey, are you sure you want to speak that way to an attending?" Meredith can hear his smile without looking up.

Bailey rolls her eyes. "Yes, I am sure, Dr. Shepherd," she says. "Go find something gory and untreatable and make yourself useful. I'm sure Dr. Grey and myself can handle this abdominal repair without the help of a neurosurgeon."

When they hear the door to the gallery close, Bailey looks over her mask at her intern. "Damn fools."

Meredith quirks a brow. "Men, or neurosurgeons?" she asks, half worried she'll get in trouble for the question.

"Anyone who isn't me," Bailey says simply, and closes the wound with one perfect suture.

* * *

After the emergency surgery, on the way to her car, she crosses paths with Shepherd again. She makes a sound of disappointment, although a flush rises up from her chest, she can feel it warm on her clavicles. "Gotta stop meeting like this," Shepherd says. "They'll start accusing us of conspiring against them."

Meredith smiles to herself, but doesn't dare herself to look at him. If she did she'd lose a layer of skin. And, if feeling was sunshine, she was on her way to a burn. "Why were you observing Bailey's surgery?"

Shepherd shrugs. "Because you were there." Now a gasp of outrage.

"Dr. Shepherd!" Meredith says in a harsh whisper, scandalized.

He grins. "No, I was reviewing a procedure. The operating room filled up while I was sitting there. But looking at you doesn't sound like a bad idea, either, now that I think of it."

Meredith reaches her car and unlocks the driver's side, tossing her bag inside and shivering slightly in the cool air. "I -I don't know what you're trying to do, but this can't go on," she says quietly, this time looking at him.

His face turns serious, and he puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Deep brown. "I can't stop thinking about you," he confesses, and the words remain suspended between them like a fallen leaf in a spider's web. Meredith's breath hitches, the effort of trying not to feel.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd," she says at last. The words are painful to her, and taste like copper on her tongue. "I just -I can't."

* * *

That night she takes a mug out from the kitchen cabinet, fills it with hot water while Izzie, Cristina, and George watch her mother's old surgical tapes. She burns her finger, the index of her left hand, and toughs out the pain. White leaf tea. She's never really liked that much, either.

Meredith thinks of her mother. Of Oolong tea in nasturtium cups. Sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen, tea cupped in her hands. Ellis leaning against a counter, or pacing, almost seeming to think aloud. As if Meredith was irrelevant, a wall to bounce ideas off of. Someone who she knew wouldn't talk back. Sometimes she would stop and pick up her tea, and Meredith would search over her mother. Trying to find an ounce of herself in that fierce genius who walked balance beams of fire, scalpel in hand.

Maybe that was surgery, Meredith thought. Walking a line of fire. The procedure was set. If the steps were followed, if nothing went wrong, then the surgery would be textbook. One wobble, one mistake, and the whole thing went up in flames.

 _ **I** butchered a heart today. _

_I am a doctor. I am a doctor. I am a doctor. I am a doctor._

 **A/N 2:** I wrote this pretty quickly, so I'm sorry if there are any typos! Again, would love to know what you think!


	4. Wild Horses

A/N: Over a year since I last updated! I moved, got a new job, and pretty much stopped watching TV for awhile. But I felt like revisiting this, so here's a new chapter. It's a little shorter than what I usually publish, and still relies heavily on episode 01x04, but I'm hoping to move away from that as I (hopefully) continue. Reviews help me out!

Chapter IV: Wild Horses

Not even half an hour after pre-rounds she and George are sent down to the pit by Bailey, tagging Alex along with them. In the first trauma room she can see Shepherd moving about, nurses and paramedics crowding the area as a man lays still on the table. The three interns hurry, tiredness forgotten, into the mêlée and Meredith catches a glimpse of the patient's X-ray. Long pins appear like torpedoes, buried deep in his brain. Shepherd is examining the patient's head more closely. The man looks relatively unharmed apart from the blood crowning his head. A little bruising, some scratches along his arms.

"Those look like-"

Shepherd looks up at her. "Nails."

Meredith looks down at the patient, then startles when he raises his hands and looks up at them with dark eyes. "I can't see my hands!"

George, searching for gloves, mutters, "My God, he's conscious."

Meredith takes some gauze from a nurse and hands it to Shepherd to help him control the bleeding. She knows head wounds bleed a lot, which makes them look scarier than they actually are but, considering this guy's condition and the fact that he's still talking, she's amazed they aren't seeing gray matter on the table instead of blood.

"Breathe deeply, George," Alex says, annoyed, "you won't pass out."

Shepherd is focused solely on their patient. "Push four milligrams of morphine titrate up to ten," he directs. "You know what, I don't want him to move."

Their patient is becoming agitated. He turns his hands over again and again, his heartbeat going up as realizes the awful truth. "I can't see," he moans.

Meredith moves forward. "It's okay, we need you to be very still, Mr…"

A nurse occupied with his IV medications looks up. "Cruz. Jorge Cruz. He tripped and fell down a flight of stairs holding a nail gun."

"Sick," Alex murmurs.

Meredith rolls her eyes as she continues to examine Mr. Cruz. Shepherd is moves his penlight across Cruz's line of vision, and Meredith notes the lack of pupillary reaction. "The optic nerve's being affected," he deduces. He continues to check for sensory reactions on the patient's arms and legs.

Meredith takes Jorge's hand and he gives a soft squeeze.

"What's our immediate concern?" Shepherd asks the room.

Meredith thinks of the nails which had probably been sitting on some shelf in a musty garage before being loaded into the nail gun. "Infection," she says immediately.

"Right. I want to be pulling these nails out in the next half hour," he looks at Meredith. "I need a CT."

"CTs are down," the nurse interjects.

"What?" "They exchanged them out last night, computers crashed, we'll have them up by one," she explains.

"So typical," Shepherd sighs, clearly annoyed. "So, what are the options?"

Jorge is settling as the morphine begins to take effect. "An MRI," George offers.

"No."

"Brilliant," Alex drawls. "The man's got nails in his head, let's put him in a giant magnet. You want films from three axis points and a C-arm in surgery."

"Excellent. You guys dig up research and find out if this has ever happened before. Go!"

Meredith looks up for directions but doesn't get any, because Jorge begins to speak. "My wife?"

"Your wife is on the way, Mr. Cruz."

Shepherd takes off his bloodied gloves. "We need to keep him calm and look for changes," he says, looking at Meredith. She nods and doesn't leave the patient's side as Shepherd moves out of the trauma room.

She pats Jorge's hand and pulls hers away, takes off her own gloves, and picks up his admittance chart. "You'd say your health's been good recently?"

Jorge is still looking up, wide awake. "Maybe some headaches," he admits. "Nothing compared to now," he adds. "Sona -that's my wife- Sona, she'll say, 'Why you think they call it a gun, moron?'" He laughs to himself. "She hates the damn things."

"With good reason!" Meredith says, amused. Jorge's wife appears, and Meredith pulls away, watching them reunite. Shepherd returns, a water bottle in his hand.

"Take his history, then book an OR, bump someone if you have to. I want to get these out as soon as possible."

"Okay," Meredith says.

"You're scrubbing in, aren't you?" He asks, and Meredith catches a twinkle in his eye. He didn't only pick her out of the other interns because she answered his question correctly. He picked her because he wanted her there with him. She remembers the electric power of adrenaline between them in his operating room while they looked into Katie Bryce's brain last week. It was a forbidden drug she suddenly craved.

* * *

She briefs Shepherd on Jorge's medical history as he washes his hands and arms at the scrub sink, already wearing the protective vest they'll both need in surgery. She notices his scrub cap is emblazoned with ferry boats. Because her mouth is covered by a mask, Meredith smirks, arms crossed.

"What?" he asks.

"What made him fall downstairs with a nail gun?" She asks, skeptical of the simple history of dizziness that she'd taken from Jorge's wife.

"He said he tripped," Shepherd counters. "Just because you hear hoofbeats don't assume zebras."

Meredith follows him into the operating room. "Something caused him to lose consciousness and fall down the stairs," she persists. "He could have a tumor!"

"Look, I have no idea why this guy's still alive, let alone moving and talking. Not a clue. Let's just get him through this before we start digging around for something else." They are gowned and gloved, and Shepherd moves toward the patient after talking briefly with the other interns.

"Hey, Doc?"

Shepherd looks down at Jorge. "Mr. Cruz?"

The patient smiles. "You don't think I could have these nails back once I wake up?"

Shepherd laughs. "Jorge, if you promise never to pick up that nail gun again, I'll give them to you."

Jorge shrugs lightly. "Okay. How 'bout you, doc?" he asks Meredith. "You think he can get them all?"

Meredith nods. "We'll get you your nails, Mr. Cruz."

Shepherd's eyes crinkle, and he looks at Meredith again. "All right, everybody. It's a beautiful morning to save lives!"

"Let's have some fun," His scrub nurse says, and the anesthesiologist laughs, used to the familiar opener.

"Fun?" Jorge asks. He squeezes Meredith's hand again, and she squeezes back, looking up to see the gallery filling up. It was a once in a lifetime surgery, and even standing in the room felt incredible.

* * *

That night, she goes to see her mother at the nursing home. It's a bad day. Ellis Grey doesn't remember her husband or her daughter, not even when Meredith shows her the pictures she'd dug up the day before while unpacking. To be ironically fair, however, Meredith doesn't remember much of her mother either in those early years. She remembers the kind young woman who read her stories in daycare, and the teenage daughter of a fellow surgeon who babysat her when neither of her parents could be home in time to put her to sleep. She remembers the smell of the antiseptic soap that lingered on her mother when she did come home from the hospital, sometimes in time for her to mumble a detached 'Goodnight' to her daughter who stood in her nightgown on the staircase in the dark. And, oddly, she remembers the little red wagon she got for her fourth birthday.

Her mother remembers Liz Fallon, her scrub nurse for almost two decades, but not her only child, who she'd known for an equal amount of time. If she were more sentimental, perhaps Meredith would have started a journal to document her years as a surgeon: the interesting surgeries she'd scrubbed in on, the annoyance that comes with living with friends, perhaps even a page or two about Shepherd. But Meredith could see herself in twenty years, a seasoned surgeon flipping through the naïve scribbles of her younger self and finding them dramatic and uninteresting. And so she didn't.

* * *

In the morning the hoofbeats turn out to be zebras. Jorge Cruz has a tumor, as she'd suspected. It's situated in a delicate area where his memories are located. Memories of his wife, their life together. Meredith can't imagine who would risk losing their past, their very self, all for the removal of a tumor. For once, she hopes her patient will refuse surgery. She even becomes frustrated with Shepherd, almost becoming emotional as he informed Jorge of the risks involved with the proposed removal of the tumor.

After visiting Liz Fallon again and telling her of Ellis' diagnosis, Meredith feels a heavy weight become minutely lighter, and joins her friends for lunch. Afterward, however, a different pressure settles on her and Meredith goes to find Shepherd, who tells her that Jorge and his wife have decided on surgery.

"It's their decision," he says. Meredith looks down, then up at him, trying to school her emotions. "Would you do it? Risk losing yourself?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. I don't know."

* * *

Later, Shepherd tells her off for trying to change Sona's mind, but once Sona leaves to return to her husband, he turns to her, incredulous.

"Dr. Grey, our job is to inform patients of the risks, not try to convince them one way or the other."

She exhales. "I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd."

"I thought you'd enjoy following the case through, getting another shot in the OR," he says, disappointed.

Meredith looks at him. "Maybe we're not all as scalpel thirsty as we appear to be."

He scoffs. "You're not scrubbing in this afternoon," he says. "You'll watch from the gallery."

Meredith takes her punishment calmly, holding his gaze for a moment before walking past him, their white coats brushing against each other.

* * *

There are other interns in the gallery with her, even some attendings snacking and sharing interesting cases, barely looking at the screen as Shepherd resects Jorge's tumor. Meredith watches intently as more and more is pulled away, her chest tightening as fragile nerves appear and he works around them. It is a long surgery, but she can't take her eyes away until Shepherd pulls his tools away and begins to close. By now it is early evening, and Meredith realizes she still has a patient to examine in the ICU before her shift is officially over. She watches through the glass as the patient is wheeled out of the OR, the nurses cleaning behind him as Shepherd walks out and back through to the scrub room. Making a decision, Meredith gets up from her seat and walks down the staircase, around the corner, and into the scrub room. Shepherd looks up in surprise at her sudden intrusion. Meredith freezes, momentarily unsure of what she should or shouldn't say.

"I wouldn't have the surgery," she blurts out. "I wouldn't risk it."

He continues to rinse his hands and arms. "We'll see how he is in the morning. You can be back on the case if you-"

"My mother," Meredith says suddenly. "My mother has Alzheimers."

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice soft.

She laughs a sad laugh. "Sometimes I refer to her in the past tense, then remind myself she's still alive, even though she can't remember who I am, or what her own name is most days." She pauses, and the hum of the hospital, of generators and lights, fills the dark silence. "I don't know if she ever really loved me. In fact, she probably regretted having me." She hears the drip of water in the sink. "But now I'll never know, will I? So no, I wouldn't ever have the surgery. And although I'm sorry for talking to Jorge's wife behind your back, I thought she deserved the true facts." He's standing there in his ferry boat scrub cap, fresh out of surgery, and probably doesn't care about her excuses. She regrets telling him.

"You're crying," Shepherd says softly. Meredith wipes at her eyes stubbornly.

"No, I'm not."

He walks up to her, and Meredith's heart skips a beat. It's dark, but when he looks at her there is a certain light in his eyes. His hands are cold and wet with water when they find her cheeks, holding her face.

Meredith is lost for a moment, then shrugs suddenly out of his hands. "I'm sorry," she whispers, her voice cracking. "I have to go."

As she flees through the door she can hear him sigh, upset with himself. Her cheeks are winter cold and warm at the same time. She ducks into the nearest room and flattens her back against the door. When she opens her eyes she finds herself in a patient's room, an old woman who's sleeping, unaware of the intrusion. Meredith wipes a hand across her face again, knowing she'll have to go back out again and act like nothing happened. But something had happened, and she was frightened of it. Frightened because she wanted it just as much as she didn't.


	5. No Rest For The Wicked

A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews! It was great to read that people were still interested, even after a year. This chapter was oddly very hard to write, but I think I wrote what I needed to. Happy reading! And leave me a review if you have time!

Chapter V: No Rest For The Wicked

There isn't enough time to dwell on avoiding Shepherd the next day, as Meredith gets pulled into heart surgery after pre-rounds, the other interns halfheartedly congratulating her and shuffling to the gallery. The heart is heavy in her hand, and she reminds herself that there's one of these inside her own chest.

Funny -we don't pay attention to our organs until they start to bother us.

She had barely slept, and now she's in surgery, and as Meredith looks at the heart that fills her hand she becomes hypnotized by it. Exhaustion makes her eyes cross, and she closes them for a moment. Suddenly, the heart slips. Her own stops momentarily, she feels drenched in ice water.

"What was that, Dr. Grey?" Dr. Burke asks. Meredith is more awake than she's ever been in her life.

"Sorry, it slipped," she says. "My hands-"

"It's okay, I'm done," he says. "You can release Mrs. Patterson's heart now. Very gently."

Meredith loosens her hold on the heart and lets it fall seamlessly back in place, then slides her hand away. As the angle of her hand changes she feels a trickle of wetness slide down her finger and into her palm. Surreptitiously she glances at her left hand and sees the tear in her glove. How long had it been open? Did her nail puncture it in the moment she'd squeezed Mrs. Patterson's heart? Panicked, she stands back while the operation comes to a close. If Burke notices, he says nothing. Interns are supposed to know their place, after all.

* * *

Meredith gets out of the scrub room as quickly as she can, and nervously runs her right hand over her left's fingers, assessing how sharp her nails are. Surely they aren't strong enough to puncture a muscle. There had been a scare at the end of the surgery. Mrs. Patterson's heart had faltered for a moment before regaining strength. Meredith is so absorbed in her own panic that she doesn't hear George congratulating her. As they walk down the hallway to the elevator to begin rounds she sees Dr. Shepherd walking by eating potato salad.

"Hey," he says, no awkwardness apparent in his voice. "Heard you got to do a CABG with Burke. Did you get to hold the heart?"

Meredith nods distractedly. "Yeah."

"It's an amazing feeling, isn't it?" he adds. "You never forget the first time."

First time, or last time? Meredith can't shake the feeling that she did something wrong. She looks back at Shepherd when she steps in the elevator with George, and Shepherd sees something. She's worried. He notices her left hand trembling, even tucked under crossed arms.

* * *

Not even four hours after surgery, Meredith gets a page from Tyler in the recovery wing: 911 for Mrs. Patterson. She forgoes the elevator and takes the stairs, flying down to her patient in time to see her heart monitor display irregular beats and lapses.

"What happened?" she asks, invading the crowd of nurses to get to Mrs. Patterson.

"She started having some swelling over her sternum and then the blood just started gushing," Tyler explained. "Dr. Burke is on his way right now."

Mr. Patterson looks up from his wife. "Is she dying?"

Meredith holds up a hand, wishing it were quieter around her. "Somebody get him out of here. Keep applying pressure," she urges, and the nurse nods, her hands over Mrs. Patterson's chest.

Momentarily, Dr. Burke arrives. "What the hell happened?" he asks.

"Everything was stable, all the tests came back perfect, no allergies," Meredith says.

"Well then what the hell went wrong?" he asks himself. "Let's move!"

The nurses help detangle wires and prepare Mrs. Patterson to go immediately into surgery. Meredith stands rooted, feeling sick.

"I popped a glove!" she says, agonized.

"What?"

Meredith's voice cracks with nerves. "In surgery, when I was holding it. I popped a glove with my fingernail and I think I might have nicked her heart!" Burke glances quickly at Mr. Patterson.

"Let's go, people!" he says, all but ignoring her, and Meredith follows along, now silent.

In the operating room Burke reprimands her, reminding her she had every opportunity to speak up. Meredith knows this, but was too terrified to admit it to anyone but George. Not terrified because she thought she'd get kicked out of the program -terrified she'd killed someone.

* * *

After the surgery Meredith drifts into an elevator and decides to go to the research library to avoid Burke, Mr. Patterson, and the chief. She pages Cristina, hoping they can catch lunch together. She looks up when Dr. Shepherd walks in. Leaning against the wall of the elevator, she looks small and anxious. Shepherd eyes her curiously after the doors close.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"What?"

"You didn't press a floor," he indicates.

"Oh." Meredith steps forward and pushes in '4'. She looks back down at her crossed arms. The only sound is the whir of the elevator. She feels his eyes on her.

"What's wrong?"

She looks up and blows hair out of her eyes. "Why do you care?"

He is surprised, and chuckles a little at her defensiveness. "Because I can see you're upset."

Meredith doesn't respond, just looks at him in her unique, direct way. After a moment, her cold eyes soften. The elevator bell dings at the third floor, and the doors slide open. Shepherd smiles at her.

"For the record, I care," he says, and waves a small wave on his way out. Meredith pauses a moment, then lifts her fingers in a small wave. He smiles a little victory smile, which cues one to cross her own face.

* * *

"You won't get kicked out of the program," George says comfortingly, eating a banana while they sit in an empty row of the library. Meredith gnaws at her lip.

"Of course she won't," Cristina says. "You're Ellis Grey's daughter. You're untouchable."

Meredith sighs. "That's not fair."

"Whatever," Cristina says absently. "Any one of us could have got picked for Burke's surgery this morning. Wonder why you got it."

"You're just bitter because you didn't get it," George says, springing to Meredith's defense.

Cristina nods. "Yeah, I am. Cardio is hardcore. I don't know how you fell asleep in there."

Meredith tucks her hair behind her ears. "I don't want special treatment."

"Yeah, but you get it anyway. Your saves are two times more valued than any one else's-"

"But when I fail, it's two times worse than if any one else did it."

Cristina slouches back against the books and pats Meredith's knee. "I'm just giving you the facts. And you're not gonna get kicked out of the program."

"Stop being mean to Meredith," George insists.

"Oh, back down. We're not in a playground," Cristina chuckles.

"Cristina's right, George," Meredith says. "She's not being mean." She smirks at Cristina.

Cristina smirks back. "Hey, how's it going with Shepherd?"

"How's what going?" Meredith asks, her stomach flips.

"You know, the eye smoldering? He talks to you a lot. You're his go-to intern for neuro cases. That can't be just special Grey treatment."

"What eye smoldering?" George asks, and Cristina shushes him.

"Okay, now who's being immature!"

Meredith shrugs. "No more eye smoldering. More like eye simmering."

Cristina snorts.

George's ears perk up. "Wait, you mean…Meredith and…Dr. Shepherd?!"

Meredith shushes him. "No, George. There's nothing going on. Just drop it."

* * *

She leaves work at six to make it to her mother's nursing home where a lawyer, a notary, and her mother are waiting to finalize the transfer of all of Ellis Grey's affairs over to Meredith. When she arrives late, however, she's informed that everyone else is there, except her mother. When she talks to Ellis, it's clear her mother is too far gone to be brought back to reality tonight. She could be anywhere. Anywhere but there where she was needed.

Her mother had been all over the world. She gave lectures on her Grey Method before large audiences with eager ears in London, Austria, and Japan all before Meredith was ten, and Meredith had never gone along with her. There wasn't a father for her to stay with, and so, with a week or two's warning, Meredith would set herself to the task of finding a school friend to host her for the time her mother was away. She'd bring home three candidates, their phone numbers and addresses listed in the neat penmanship her mother had insisted on from an early age. Ellis would call each home, sort through any parents who had professions she didn't approve of, and remind her daughter to take her house keys with her to school, because she didn't want a repeat of "last time". The September Meredith was seven and had come home from school to a locked door. Ellis had found her daughter on the doorstep of their quiet, barely lived in house in soiled jeans with red-rimmed eyes at eleven that night.

Meredith remembers her mother hurrying her inside, embarrassed even though no one was outside to witness them, and taking her upstairs, stripping the clothes off and putting her in a lukewarm bath. She'd sat on the toilet seat, head in her hands, said nothing while her daughter cleaned herself off, and passed her a dark blue towel when she said, "Mommy, I'm done." The next afternoon Ellis gave Meredith a key to the house and told her never to forget it. And she never did.

As she grew older, Meredith stopped finding families to stay with while her mother was away and started inviting her own friends over. No parents. They'd drink contraband vodka and go to school with fuzzy heads for first period Biology. Ellis knew, of course. But as long as Meredith brought back stellar report cards and didn't bother her after long days at work, she turned a blind eye.

After college, when Meredith came home and announced she was going to Europe, Ellis didn't look up from her desk in the small downstairs study. She was writing in one of her many journals. "When are you coming back?"

Meredith shrugged. "I don't know. We're thinking Italy, Greece, Germany, maybe France if we want to try out our high school French-"

"I don't care about that, Meredith. Just…take your keys."

Meredith looked confused. "I'll probably go back to my apartment after."

Ellis looked up at her daughter, a willowy young woman leaning in the doorway, her wavy hair and striped shirt making her look French enough already. "Well, I don't know if I'll be here if you need to get into the house, so make sure you've got them somewhere."

* * *

Meredith and Sadie went to Venice first. The only city above water that will end up under water. They had gelatos, pestos, and espressos. And pasta, of course. Then, to walk off the pasta, they hiked the Italian mountains, saw the burnt red roofs of villages.

In Greece they stayed in a hostel that spat them out onto the Baltic beach, where they walked along the shore with the cold ocean kissing their feet. The light water complimented the bright whiteness of the houses and their turquoise tiles. Here they spoke none of the language but managed to meet two British post-college travelers whose names they'd never remember. Meredith vaguely remembers hers being a good lay, impressive after the amount of cheap wine they'd consumed beforehand.

Somehow they ended up in the southern countryside of France and couldn't be bothered to make the rest of the journey to Paris. They liked the quietness so much after one day that Meredith decided to deepen her debt by renting a cottage for two weeks. For once she didn't need to think or talk, and so while Sadie took care of normal things like grocery shopping and making sure they had toilet paper, Meredith walked around outside and experienced the world seemingly for the first time, as if she were a small child. Her mother had never sent her off to an outdoor summer camp. She spent the school vacations at the hospital when she was young enough to not be a bother, and when she discovered the taste for rebellion in high school she spent it going to parties or smoking pot on the roof of her friends' houses.

A river ran near the cottage, and Meredith went down to it through the waist-high weeds of the abandoned nearby fields in the afternoon, Sadie off at the store to buy booze while her latest guy hung around the house. The water was wide and slow, light skittering across the surface like gold coins. Meredith turned to see him trudging out to join her, his brow wrinkled in the blazing sunlight, his sandals catching on the straw-like grasses whereas she'd come barefoot. There were mossy stones across one plane of the river, and Meredith set out across them, looking at the other side where the water cascaded down. Below her, grasses waved under the surface, suspended in time.

She was alone at her perch with only the bronzed boy looking out at her. She pulled off her shirt and stepped out of her shorts, throwing them back to shore.

"What are you doing?" He asked, the question cut off when she plunged into the green water.

She'd been in pools, clear like contact lens fluid with the drying feel of chlorine. But this was wild. Even its murky taste as she spit it off her lips at the surface was wonderful. Meredith turned over in the gentle current. She heard the boy say something else, but when she turned over again he was gone, retreating through the dry weeds. She dove under again, eyes open. Suddenly her coiled rage towards her own life seemed to slip away, and she was just a fish swimming among the water weeds. Above her the surface looked made of clear rolling marbles.

Sadie joined her upon her return, and they laughed over her current summer lover, apparently back at the house preparing a late lunch, too hungover to swim.

Another day they sat together along with a band of twenty-somethings from the nearby university town, drinking and eating, picnic-style, a melange of unfinished lunches they'd prepared. It smelled like rain. They could hear it in the heavy metallic thrumming of the cicadas. Two of the boys were out in the field cutting the grass with rusty sickles they'd found in the old shed. The girls discouraged them. They all looked like a painting. The bourgeoisie laughing at the peasants.

When they finally did decide to go to Paris Meredith called her mother from a hotel in town. Ellis' voice came through the phone like an angry dog.

"Where the hell have you been?" she barked. "I've been trying to get in touch with you for weeks."

Meredith glanced at her bare arms, where a smattering of freckles had appeared over the past two months. "We're just now leaving to go to Paris tomorrow. I wanted to call to tell you-"

"No, you're coming home," Ellis interrupted. "Now. As soon as possible."

Meredith sighed. "Mom, we talked about this."

"Damn it, Meredith, just get on the earliest plane out from Charles de Gualle."

Meredith wrinkled her forehead. "Mom, is everything okay? You sound more…than usual."

She heard her mother sigh, almost in defeat. "No. No, it's not. I need you to come home immediately."

* * *

The drive home is quiet and long. This day has left her exhausted, and all Meredith can think of is how wonderful it will be to brush her teeth and fall into bed. She doesn't even feel like eating dinner. At a stoplight she groans as she remembers Izzie's party. Hopefully it will be easy to get through, and since it's just friends she won't have to try too hard -they'll be tired too. But when she pulls up to her mother's house, barely able to navigate between the other cars parked outside of it, she realizes that Izzie's "small get-together" was anything but.

"Izzie, I'm gonna kill you!" she says to her steering wheel, putting the Jeep in park and taking her keys out of the ignition. She leans her head against the frame of her car window and looks at the house. The windows lit up, music oozing out from inside, the sounds of a party. The idea of going in and pretending to have a good time in itself is tiring. Instead, Meredith lets her eyes close and tries to take a catnap.

A car pulls up, the doors shut loudly, and two people laugh as they walk into the party. In the distance, the ferry horn blows once, lonely.

A sudden tap on the passenger door, and Meredith startles awake. It's Shepherd. Of course. Sleepily, she opens the door and climbs out of her blue Jeep. This car had seen her through a Colorado roadtrip and several post-breakup solo karaoke sessions.

"How did you know about the party?" she asks. He smirks.

"I assumed you forgot to invite me, although you didn't seem to forget anyone else."

Meredith shakes her head. "Believe me, I didn't invite a single person. This is all Izzie. It was supposed to be a few interns and some beer."

"Are you going in?"

Leaning against the cold side of her car, Meredith shrugs. "Maybe. Are you going in?"

He shrugs. "Maybe."

Meredith exhales a breath of frustration and amusement. "You are so...annoyingly..."

"Charming?"

Meredith laughs. "No!"

He stands beside her, leaning against the Jeep as well. She lets her head fall back and eyes close momentarily, then opens them. "Do you like me because I'm Meredith Grey?"

"What?"

"Grey. Because my mother is Ellis Grey."

He nods seriously. "Oh, exclusively."

"What?!"

He scoffs. "No!"

Meredith laughs. The music inside grows louder.

"I like you because you-"

Meredith turns and, because they're side by side, finds herself right in front of him. He brushes hair out of her face, and she presses herself forward, leaning up to kiss him like he's the sky and she's the rising sun. Their eyes meet briefly before they kiss -blue to grey, then close as he pulls her in, a hand in her honeyed hair. One kiss melts into another, and Meredith thinks, _this is where heart and head meet._

She pulls back first, lips swollen and cheeks flushed. Her eyes dance in the darkness. "Go away," she says quietly, sweetly. "Before I change my mind."


	6. Streets and Stories

A/N: Another chapter! I was in a really good mood while I wrote this for some reason. Okay, to be fair it was around 3:00am and I was riding a caffeine high, but still, I got some work done quickly. Hope you like the result! Reviews make me happy!

Chapter VI: Streets and Stories

Seattle decides it's done with dolling out clear skies and nice weather, and so Meredith wakes up to a blue-tinted city, rain dripping down her bedroom window, a leak under the kitchen sink. She drives to work in the half-light, her fingertips tapping on the steering wheel. A city she likes, a job she loves, and a handsome neurosurgeon who's driving her crazy. Not a bad way to start a Sunday.

Cristina rushes into the locker room, later than Meredith. They put their scrubs on quickly and Cristina frees her wild hair out of her shirt.

"I'm having boy problems," Meredith murmurs. "What's your excuse?"

Cristina raises her eyebrows and shrugs, and Meredith smirks as they grab their jackets and stethoscopes. "Gonna tell me?"

"Shut up, we're late for rounds," Cristina says, setting off quickly to find Bailey. Meredith shrugs and tries to catch up with her friend.

* * *

"You're both late," Bailey says, not looking their way as Meredith and Cristina fall in behind the other interns. They all walk quickly to the inpatient floor of the hospital. "When we walk in this door you will maintain decorum. You will not laugh, vomit, or drop your jaw. Are we understood?"

The interns nod, and as Bailey walks in the patient's room Izzie looks around. "Why would we laugh?"

Alex grins. "Oh, just you wait."

They enter the room and Meredith quickly slides herself against a wall, trying to keep her eyes firmly in their sockets instead of bugging out when she sees the size of the enormous tumor growing on Annie Connors' abdomen.

"Good morning, Annie!" Karev says, sounding sincere.

Bailey interjects. "Karev, we refer to patients as Mr. or Mrs.-"

"Oh, I told him to call me Annie. 'Mrs. Connors' makes me feel old and fat. Which I am. But, why feel that way?"

Burke walks in, on his way to surgery with his flowered scrub cap tied on already.

"Oh, Annie, this is Dr. Burke," Alex says. Meredith lifts her eyebrow, impressed and suspicious at his newfound bedside manner.

"Good morning," Dr. Burke says.

"Dr. Karev?" Bailey prompts.

"Oh. Annie Connors is a forty-three year old woman who presented last night with progressive shortness of breath for the past three months. Found to have a very large tumor of unknown origin pressed against her diaphragm. Stable vital signs, scheduled for a CT this morning, Sir," Karev presents proudly.

Burke nods. "Thank you, Dr. Karev." Now looking at Annie. "Are you at all claustrophobic?"

"I've been housebound for the past year. How claustrophobic could I be?"

"All right then. Dr. Stevens is going to take you for a CT. It'll give us a better look at the tumor and we'll know how to proceed from there," Burke directs.

Annie clears her throat. "Would it be possible for Alex to take me instead? I mean, he's just so fun to look at."

Burke nods and Izzie sighs. "Sure, Mrs. Connors."

So, Alex gets the coveted case because of good looks and nice manners and the rest of the interns file out, disappointed and jealous.

* * *

As the interns walk into another patient's room on rounds Meredith notices that he's up and out of bed, attempting to walk around the room with the help of a younger woman. She can see right away the signs of Parkinson's disease, and isn't surprised to see that Shepherd has arrived before them and is already looking at the patient's chart.

"Mr. Levange, this is Dr. Bailey and our fine staff of surgical interns," he says, too bright for seven in the morning. He catches Meredith's eye as they walk in and she feels the corner of her mouth twitch in a secret smile.

Mr. Levange is helped back into bed by the younger woman, trembling. "Welcome to hell, kids," he says, and Meredith likes him already. She's always been a glass half empty person as well.

"Who's presenting?" Dr. Bailey asks the room.

"Edward Levange is a sixty-three year old man admitted for pain management for dyskinesia," George says. "He's been stable since last night and responding well to pain medications." Meredith leans forward to help the woman lower Mr. Levange into bed, and he winks at her.

"Izzie? Possible treatments?" Bailey asks.

"For Parkinson's disease? Um, deep brain stimulation has shown very positive-"

Shepherd interrupts. "Not for Parkinson's. For spinal pain."

Izzie struggles to change her answer. Shepherd looks to Meredith. He knows she has the answer. She doesn't hesitate.

"Introspinal catheter," Meredith offers. "That way he can have constant pain medication."

Shepherd nods. "Excellent." He turns to Mr. Levange. "This is Dr. Grey. She's gonna prep you for the procedure and assist." A ripple of jealousy runs through the interns. It might not be an intensely complicated procedure, but an assist is an assist. And so another intern gets a case and leaves the rest to fight it out.

"Okay, Mr. Levange," Meredith says, setting down his chart after a quick scan. "We're gonna get you more comfortable. I'll go downstairs and I'll be right back to prep you." He nods, and the young woman follows Meredith out of the room.

"Excuse me," she says. "I'm sorry, Dr. Grey. My dad seems to like you. He's always liked skinny blondes." Meredith smiles. "Is that rude? I'm sorry, I'm so tired."

"Is there something you wanted to ask?" Meredith offers.

Ms. Levange nods. "I was wondering if you could talk to him about brain surgery."

Meredith raises her eyebrows, knowing what procedure his daughter is referring to but doubtful she'll get to assist on it.

"The other doctor mentioned it and I've read about it online," his daughter says. "If it worked it could help with most of his symptoms, not just his pain."

Meredith nods. "Is he a candidate?"

"He is, but he's afraid of it. The surgery on his back he can understand but his brain…There are risks, but his quality of life…"

Meredith understands immediately. "There isn't any."

"And it keeps getting worse."

The woman is emotional. She looks at the floor, then back at Meredith. "I'm getting married in a month. I already lost my mom, and I want him to walk me down the aisle. Maybe that's selfish, but you don't know what it's like having a parent, watching him…"

"I do," Meredith says, making eye contact with her. "I do know what it's like. I'll see what I can do."

* * *

Downstairs she steals an apple from the residents' lounge and finds an empty chair to sit in. She takes a bite out of the apple and crosses her legs, dangling her foot in thought. Another chair pulls up and Cristina is sitting next to her, a bag of vending machine Fritos in her hand.

"Burke's gonna get me on the tumor case," she says smugly. Meredith turns in her chair.

"No way! You're scrubbing in?"

Cristina nods. "Oh, yeah. Me and George."

"George?"

Cristina takes the apple out of Meredith's hand and gives her the Fritos. "Yeah, Alex pissed her off and got kicked off the case. How's Old Man Twitch?"

Meredith closes her eyes for a moment, amused and appalled at the same time. "That's why I'm hanging out here. I'm waiting for Shepherd. The daughter wants him to consider brain surgery."

Cristina takes another bite of apple. "You spend any more time in Neuro with Shepherd and you might as well declare a specialty now."

Meredith shrugs. "Hey, I can't help it if I've got the answers when you don't."

"You don't even know if you're scrubbing in yet." They see Shepherd leave the X-ray room, and Meredith hands back the Fritos.

"Have fun with your tumor!" she says as she stands. "Send me a postcard from the O.R!"

Cristina rolls her eyes. "Yeah, have fun watching from the gallery when you don't get your surgery."

* * *

Shepherd looks up when Meredith reaches him, slightly out of breath. "Dr. Shepherd?"

"Hmm?"

"Mr. Levange, the Parkinson's patient," she begins, "is he a good candidate for D.B.S?"

Shepherd nods. "Yes, but he's not interested."

Meredith pushes forward. "Okay. But I think it's worth talking to him again."

He gestures for her to walk with him. "Why?"

"His daughter mentioned it. She's done research, and they know the risks, but it would improve his quality of life significantly. I think if we just push a little, maybe he'd give it a shot."

Shepherd punches the down arrow in front of the elevator to head to the operating rooms. "Then wouldn't the surgery be for her, and not for him?"

Meredith moves in front of him, looking him in the eye. "It would be for both of them. I know what watching someone suffer from a chronic illness is like."

He nods. "I'll try."

The elevator doors ding open and the people filter out around them. Shepherd gestures for Meredith to follow him. She does, confused, and watches as he presses '1' and '3'. As soon as the doors close again, leaving them alone, Shepherd turns to her, cups her cheek and kisses her. She's caught off guard, and as the elevator passes the fourth floor he kisses her harder. She laughs and changes the angle. This is a different kiss from the soft, new one in front of her house. Grabbing the lapels of his jacket, she gives as good as she takes, and when they reach the third floor and the bell dings again, she releases him just as quickly as she'd pulled him close.

The doors open, and Meredith gives him a mischievous smile, smoothing her hair and scrub top where he'd scrunched it in his hands. He looks at her, thrown, and she raises her left eyebrow.

"I'll see you later, Dr. Shepherd." Her voice is husky from the surprise of the kiss.

He nods as people enter the elevator, and she smiles to herself at the pleasantly-shocked expression on his face.

* * *

After consulting with Mr. Levange and his daughter one more time, he finally agrees to have the D.B.S surgery. _'_ _You gonna be there, Blondie?_ _'_ he'd asked, and she'd squeezed his shaky hand and told him yes. Meredith calls down for an O.R and seeks out Shepherd, hoping he hasn't started his work on the giant tumor yet in O.R. 1. She bursts into the scrub room as Burke, Shepherd, and Bailey are scrubbing in.

"Mr. Levange has agreed to D.B.S," she says, schooling her breathless voice into a calm one.

Shepherd looks up, clearly pleased behind his mask. George and Cristina, ready to be gloved and gowned, stand by waiting for his response.

"On one condition," Meredith continues. "That we do the surgery today."

Burke nods to Shepherd. "Don't worry, it'll take hours before we get around to the spine. I'll page you."

"All right then," Shepherd says, taking off his mask. He nods to Bailey and walks out of the scrub room. He looks Meredith up and down, already prepped in her scrubs and surgical cap. "Bravo," he says. "What turned him around?"

"His daughter, I think," she responds. "Although he specifically requested me in the O.R."

Shepherd smirks. "Using your feminine wiles to get O.R time. What next?"

"Ha!" Meredith says victoriously as they enter the next scrub room. "I have a few other tricks up my sleeve."

He chuckles. "May I remind you that we're all wearing the same sleeves here, manufactured in bulk by large factories in far off lands."

Meredith reaches for a mask. "Still, different shades of blue."

* * *

"How're you doing, Mr. Levange?" Shepherd asks, staring through the miscroscope lenses into the patient's brain.

"All right," Mr. Levange says, stubbornly refusing to be nervous. "Hey, where's Blondie?"

Meredith smiles. "I'm right here," she says, moving into view. "Can't you see me? I've got my cap on."

"I'm shaky, not blind." He winks. "Anything goes wrong here, I'm blaming you."

She nods. "Okay. In that case, I'll stay where you can see me. Now we just have to drill a hole and find the spot that controls the motor function."

He begins to look nervous. "You can't see my brain from there. Aren't you supposed to be learning something?"

She shares a look with Shepherd, who nods, and she understands. "I'm good right here." Meredith takes Mr. Levange's hands to still them, her steady touch calming him.

"Okay, Mr. Levange. Take a couple of deep breaths and focus on the pretty girl," Shepherd says. The scrub nurse's eyes crinkle at the edges in a smile, and Mr. Levange looks into Meredith's grey-green eyes.

The sound of the drill, and twenty minutes pass. She observes, paying special attention to the screen showing the progress of the probe delving into Mr. Levange's brain.

"You'll know when we find the right spot," she says, comfortingly. He becomes frustrated, angry tears forming in his eyes as his hands and arms continue to shake.

Then, slowly, the uncontrollable shaking stops, his hands slow, and he's able to move them willingly. He stares at Meredith. "I'll be goddamned."

* * *

After the procedure, which didn't take as long as was expected, she and Shepherd wheel the patient to the elevator.

"You did great work today, Dr. Grey," he says, and she nods graciously.

"You weren't so bad yourself."

He chuckles, pats Mr. Levange's shoulder, and leaves them. Meredith thinks of their last elevator ride together and thinks, _too bad there_ _'_ _s a patient with us._ She gets in the elevator and presses '3', then leans against the gurney.

"Tell you what, Blondie," Mr. Levange says groggily. "If you don't marry him, I will."

Meredith laughs. "What makes you think I'd ever marry him, Mr. Levange?"

He shrugs as best as he can. "You took away my shaky hands, but I'm still not blind. And I think you can call me Ed."

She gives him a big smile. "Sure, Ed."

* * *

After her shift, Meredith waits in front of her Jeep in the parking lot, parked next to Shepherd. She waits fifteen minutes, beginning to feel slightly pathetic as a misty rain falls. She might as well have a boombox over her head. Instead she's got a bottle of celebratory champagne in her bag and knows Dr. Shepherd has gotten out of surgery.

Soon enough he comes out of the hospital, rushing to his car. Meredith smirks at the way he's hurrying to escape the rain.

"You know, it rains in Seattle."

He looks up and notices her leaning against her car, the misty rain settling in her light hair like dew. "They told me that before I moved here. I didn't think they meant every day, all day, all night."

Meredith tilts her head. "We are very serious about our rain."

"Don't tell me you've been waiting outside for me?" he chuckles.

"What makes you think I'd be waiting for _you_?" There is a flicker of doubt that passes across Shepherd's eyes, and Meredith laughs. She stands up and goes to him, brushing the rain off his face and kissing him, not in a hurry. They part, and he smiles at her. "I brought champagne."

"What are we celebrating?" he asks.

Meredith shrugs. "Good surgery, a rainy city."

He nods, conceding. "Where are we going?"

She shrugs again. "Know any good places?"

"You're being coy on purpose," Shepherd laughs. "Who's gonna drive you home after we finish the champagne?"

"Hmm," Meredith muses. "I was hoping you'd have an answer for that."

He smirks. "Get in, I know the perfect spot."

* * *

They're sitting outside on Shepherd's makeshift front porch in two fold out chairs, drinking champagne out of chipped coffee mugs and sheltered from the rain by a tiny awning. Meredith has a blanket draped around her shoulders. The view from here is extraordinary. She can see it all -the industrial city as well as the proud mountains around it. The bay, the needle, the twinkling blurry stoplights changing hues.

"What's your plan for the land?" she asks.

"I'm gonna build a house."

Meredith raises an eyebrow. "In between your multiple surgeries, I assume?"

Shepherd rolls his eyes. "Not _now._ But I can't stay in this trailer forever."

She shrugs. "My mother's house is practically a pit of squalor by now. The only thing holding us together is Izzie's obsessive cleaning." She groans. "I forgot to call the plumber. There's a leak under the sink, and all this rain isn't helping."

"I can fix it," Shepherd offers.

Meredith smirks. "I'd like to see George and Izzie's faces if you were to walk in as our handyman."

He chuckles. She looks at him, slightly buzzed. "What?"

"I feel like teenagers sneaking around. Do I have to get you back by midnight? Can we risk a kiss at the door?"

She smiles. "It's against the rules. We both know that. I get enough attention already for being a Grey. I really don't need to be seen making out with my boss."

He takes a sip out of his mug. "About that: couldn't you start calling me 'Derek'?"

Meredith considers this. "Maybe. It's an odd first name. I've never met a Derek." She shrugs. "Or a Shepherd. Were your ancestors shepherds?"

He chuckles and stands. "I'm making you some coffee, Dr. Grey."

She nods in approval. "That's right, I am Dr. Grey! The disappointing daughter of Ellis Grey!"

He goes into the trailer and she can hear him moving around inside, preparing the coffee. "What's she like, anyway? Your mom."

Meredith stares into her empty cup. "Well, she's senile."

He chuckles at her dark humor. "Did you really want to be a doctor, or did she push you?"

"Oh, she did everything she could to _discourage_ me from going to med school. She said I didn't have what it took."

He opens the door to the trailer and leans against it. "That's strange. I guess it's good parenting, though."

Meredith stands up, wrapping the blanket tighter around her. "Good parenting? My mother was about as nurturing as a steak knife."

He tilted his head. "But she knew being a surgeon was difficult and took a lot out of you. It was fair advice."

She had never thought of this before. "I don't know what I would be if I wasn't a doctor." She hands him her empty mug when he reaches for it. "Maybe I went to med school just to prove my mom wrong. Who cares."

"Cream and sugar?" Shepherd calls, back in the trailer. "Wait, this cream is…bad. Very bad."

"Coffee in any form," Meredith calls back. "Hook me up to an IV!"

He reappears and gives her a mug full of black coffee. She smiles at him.

"Usually I hold my alcohol very well. But tonight I seem to be slightly impaired, Derek."

Shepherd chuckles. "That's what happens when you pull long shifts and forget to eat."

"That is strong," Meredith says, grimacing at the first taste of coffee. "And very bad."

"You're welcome."

* * *

At one in the morning he drives her back to the hospital parking lot. It's truly raining now. She's pleasantly warmed from the coffee and welcome heat in his car. When Shepherd puts the car in park, Meredith sighs and turns to look at him.

"What?"

He shakes his head. "You're very different…I've never met anyone like you."

Meredith rolls her eyes. "Please, you barely know me!"

He chuckles. "That's true. Can we do this again sometime? Maybe a real date. A take you out to dinner kind of date? Is that allowed?"

Meredith bites her lip. "We'll see, Dr. Shepherd. Now," she looks at her watch, "my parents are gonna kill me. I'm out after curfew." She reaches for the door handle, but is pulled gently back by Shepherd, who kisses her again. She smiles through it, then puts a hand on his chest and pulls away.

He looks pleased with himself. "There. I got my kiss at the door."

"Goodnight, Dr. Shepherd," Meredith says, opening her door and stepping out into the rain.

"Goodnight, Dr. Grey." She smiles to herself as she walks around to her car door and unlocks it, climbing inside. He's already driving out of his parking space and headed back to the trailer.

Meredith turns on her lights and puts the Jeep in reverse, pulls out of her space and goes in the opposite direction. She flips on the radio. Forecast for tomorrow: more rain, sunrise at six-thirty, sunset at five-thirty. Her stomach flutters nervously at how fast she's falling for Derek Shepherd, and how he's clearly already fallen for her. She's never felt this way before, even though she's pissed at the cliché of it all. Something about the way he cares. Or the way he takes her opinions seriously. Or how he doesn't call her out for being a complete pessimist on the subject of her mother, or walk on eggshells around it. She knows she should stop whatever they're doing now, before it gets any more serious and lands her career in jeopardy. But as she pulls into her driveway and is reminded that he's the guy who'd rather wait with her outside, missing the party just to be with her, she can't bring herself to end it. Not yet.


	7. Waste

A/N: Less Shepherd/Grey interaction here, but it'll heat up in the next chapter! Using the episodes as skeletons and then building my own story off of them is really helpful, at least for the first season, which is why you're still seeing lots of borrowed dialogue. Hopefully the conversations I've invented read as natural as the script. Anyway, happy beginning of March and let me know what you think in a review!

Chapter VII: Waste

A bitter cold but windless day, a light snow sifting out of the morning fog like confectioner's sugar and melting on contact with the damp ground. The air hits her cheeks hard when Meredith opens her car door in front of the hospital. Izzie and George shuffle out behind her, grumbling over the cold, but Meredith remembers Massachusetts winters and knows this day is an anomaly for Seattle. Cristina climbs off her motorcycle and walks into the hospital with Meredith.

"You look terrible," Meredith observes.

Cristina gives her a look. "I'm tired, I'm cold, I'm caffeine-deprived, and I have the flu."

Meredith shrugs. "Well, we are in a hospital."

"Yeah, I'd rather be in bed at home."

* * *

Once they've changed into their scrubs and Cristina manages to drink the remaining half of Meredith's strong, black coffee, Dr. Bailey appears, unfazed by the cold weather and bunch of miserable-looking interns.

"O'Malley, Yang, Karev, go on to the clinic." When the interns don't react, except Cristina catching a whiff of Alex's post-run sweat and looking nauseas, Bailey snaps her fingers. "Hey! Patients are waiting!" The three interns shuffle off to their posts. "Izzie, you're hangin' with me today." Izzie smiles, pleased with her placement. "Grey, there's a consult in the pit. A girl with a fever and abdominal pain, then go check all post-op patients, Izzie and I are doing pre-ops. Go."

Meredith nods and heads to the elevator, instead opting for the stairs to hopefully wake her up. A patient with a fever and abdominal pain could be a possible appendectomy, and she'd love to perform one solo. Perhaps if she stays on Bailey's good side -if such a thing exists- she'll be able to do it.

* * *

Her patient is a young girl, looking very forlorn and small on the large gurney, framed by her parents. Meredith takes her chart from Tyler and skims over it. "Hello," she greets the family. "I'm Dr. Grey. Do you mind if I do a quick exam?"

The girl shrugs, and Meredith picks up her stethoscope, placing it on the left side of the girl's chest. Heartbeat is slightly raised but nothing to worry about, normal breath sounds.

"I think she got some bug on her trip to Mexico with her friends," the girl's mother says. She stands in sharp contrast to her daughter, tall and thin as a needle, with a sharp nose and confident voice. "I told her not to go to a third-world country but does she ever listen?"

The girl sits chewing at her nails, clearly nervous.

"She's been weak ever since, and she's lost weight," her father says, concerned.

The girl looks up. "Barely."

Meredith takes a step back, taking in the girl's appearance.

"And this morning Claire passed out in the shower," her father adds.

"When was the trip?" Meredith asks.

Claire shrugs. "A couple weeks ago. I'm really fine, I just have a fever."

"Okay, well can you just lie back for me so I can finish the exam?"

She freezes. "No. Please. I don't need an exam. Just give me some antibiotics and send me home."

Meredith looks at the girl, trying to read her calm, quiet gaze. It's one she recognizes as a look she often wore when she felt like too much of a burden on her mother.

"Well, maybe it is just a fever," she says reassuringly, "but they called down for a surgeon, so I have to finish the exam to make sure you can go home." Meredith notices Claire's parents hovering, and makes a decision she knows most teenage girls would appreciate. "You know, this might be easier if Claire and I had some privacy."

* * *

"Okay, Claire, I'm just going to apply some pressure on your abdomen," Meredith says gently. "You tell me if I hurt you."

Claire nods, more relaxed than she had been with her parents, but still trembling slightly.

Meredith presses low on Claire's abdomen, then moves up, her touch light but firm. Suddenly, Claire gasps.

"Don't push so hard," she says.

Meredith sighs. "Can you lift your shirt so I can examine your stomach?"

Claire hesitates for a long time, and Meredith gives it to her, even knowing that patients are waiting for her upstairs. Then, slowly, Claire raises her shirt. Four small surgical scars are visible on the left side of her abdomen, clearly recent.

"Where did you get these?" Meredith asks gently. "These scars are still pink. Did you have a procedure done in Mexico?"

Claire looks up at her. "Don't tell my parents," she implores.

* * *

Meredith takes the stairs again, but when she opens the door to the stairwell she sees Dr. Shepherd coming into the hospital, apparently having skipped pre-rounds. He catches a glimpse of her and turns, walking toward her. Meredith tilts her head in a secret smile, then chokes down a laugh when his calm approach turns into him pushing her back through the door to the stairwell. His mouth tastes like sweetened dark roast when he kisses her, his fingertips sinking into the nest of hair beneath her ponytail, and she's wide awake. It's wonderfully familiar and surprising at the same time.

"Good morning," he says, his morning voice is a bit husky.

"It sure seems like one so far," Meredith says, trying to break free of his arms. He squeezes her close for a moment, not letting her out, and she laughs and pushes at his arms. "Dr. Shepherd, I have to answer a page!"

He pouts. "On Sunday it was Derek."

She rolls her eyes. "Derek, let me go. I need to find Dr. Bailey."

He lets her go and she turns, ready to leave but lingering. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" he asks.

Meredith shakes her head, steals one last look, then opens the door and lets herself out, clearing her throat as she sets off to find Bailey.

* * *

She finds her resident walking up another staircase, trailed by a sick Cristina. "You paged?"

"Where are we?" Bailey asks.

Meredith catches up with her, skipping steps. "My pit patient is febrile, and she has peritoneal signs. I think she had some sort of illegal surgery done in Mexico."

"Botched abortion?" Cristina offers, her voice coming out as a croak. Bailey looks at her intern and sighs.

"Cristina, go find yourself an I.V and an on-call room. Find me when you're hydrated and no longer a walking disease."

Cristina looks relieved and slows behind them, trudging down the rest of the stairs slowly.

"It's not a botched abortion," Meredith continues. "She has four laparoscopic scars on her abdomen and won't say what they're from. The parents are clueless."

"And she's a minor?" Bailey asks.

Meredith nods. "Seventeen. Freshman in college."

"Did you order up for a C.T?"

She nods again. "Yes."

"Okay. Work on those post-ops while you're waiting. But first take Cristina that I.V."

* * *

Meredith gently knocks on the on-call room Cristina paged her to, opening it to reveal a black room that smells slightly of vomit.

"Cristina? Are you awake?" A noncommittal 'hmm' comes from the bottom bunk and Meredith flips on the light switch. The voice grumbles again and when she sits up Meredith sees that it's Cristina.

"Bailey told me to bring you this," she says.

Cristina groans again. "A banana bag? I'm probably missing killer surgeries. I think Burke has an aortic valve replacement at noon."

Meredith sits down on the floor beside the bed and takes Cristina's arm, quickly tying a tourniquet. Cristina bristles and sits up straighter. "What are you doing?"

"Banana bagging you."

She shakes her head. "No, no, I don't trust those hands."

Meredith smiles. "Come on, these are magic Ellis Grey offspring hands! I can find a vein."

Two failed attempts later and Meredith succeeds in hooking Cristina up to electrolytes and fluids designed to replenish her immune system and take away her flu symptoms. She's now leaning against the wall with a stack of post-op notes, filling them out thoroughly in the relative calm of the on-call room.

"I slept with Burke," Cristina reveals quietly, her eyes still closed. Meredith had thought she was sleeping. She puts down her pen.

"What?"

Cristina opens one eye to look at her friend. "Oh, don't look at me like that. And don't think I'm taking advantage of him because I'm not." She closes her eyes and misses Meredith's skeptical look. Cristina opens her eyes again. "Okay, it would be _nice_ if he could get me in to some interesting surgeries, but other than that it's…strictly…professional."

Meredith scoffs, amused. "Professional? How many times have you slept together?"

Cristina shrugs, then grimaces when the motion causes her to feel dizzy. "Enough for him to think it means something."

"Does it?"

"I don't know. No. Not to me, anyway." She closes her eyes again. Meredith thinks carefully, then decides to come clean.

"I made out with Shepherd."

Cristina turns her head to look at her. "You two haven't had sex yet?"

Meredith looks shocked. "No! Wait, you thought we were sleeping together?"

Meredith hands her some charts and Cristina, marginally better, looks them over while they talk. "Yeah, well, I assumed."

"Well, we're not. And I don't plan on it," Meredith says, unsure, putting down her last chart. "I want us to stay strictly…professional."

"Strictly professional or _strictly professional_?" Cristina asks. "Because that wouldn't work for you two."

"What do you mean?"

Cristina scoffs. "You know, you can be really clueless." She looks at Meredith, staring back at her with her clear eyes, confused. "Oh, come on, Meredith. George is clearly in love with you, Alex would probably sleep with you if you said yes, and Shepherd…"

Meredith, overwhelmed with this information, motions for Cristina to continue. Cristina sighs. "McDreamy has it _bad_ , Meredith. You should see the way he looks at you when you're in surgery together."

Meredith frowns. "He should be looking at his patient."

Cristina laughs sadly. "Well, whenever he isn't looking at his patient, he's looking at you. So do something about it, before something happens that you might regret."

* * *

Meredith sits in a radiology room, slightly shaken, going over Claire Rice's C.T readings.

"Is this girl fat?" Dr. Bailey asks, confused.

"Not at all. She's a normal college kid."

"So, what do you see?"

Meredith looks more closely. "Her stomach's stapled. She's had a gastric bypass?"

Bailey nods. "And a bad one at that."

* * *

Later, they find and talk to Claire's parents. Meredith begins and braves the gauntlet.

"Gastric bypass is a procedure normally done on obese patients to help them lose weight," she explains.

Mr. Rice looks perplexed. "Claire? She doesn't need to lose weight."

Mrs. Rice turns to him. "Are you kidding? This means the world to her." She looks at the doctors. "This is so typical of her to take the easy way out. She's done it with everything since she was a little kid."

"Mrs. Rice, nothing about this is going to be _easy_ ," Bailey warns. "She's gonna face a lifelong struggle with malnutrition unless she has surgery to reverse the procedure."

"Do the surgery," Mrs. Rice says firmly. "I told her to watch the freshmen fifteen. 'Don't eat junk, exercise', but when she came home Christmas break who had to take her out and buy her a new pair of size six jeans because she couldn't get in the ones I got her last summer?"

Meredith thinks of her own closet. She's always been slender. ' _Skinny as a rail_ ', her mother once called her. But she has clothes ranging from size two to size eight depending on what brand, what article of clothing, and how comfortable she wants to feel. Claire Rice has absolutely nothing to worry about.

Bailey interjects before Mrs. Rice can go any further. "Unfortunately, there were complications with the first bypass."

"What do you mean?" Claire's father asks.

"She has what looks like an abscess under her diaphragm and edema," Dr. Bailey says, "which is a swelling of the abdominal wall. I can't say for certain that she'll recover completely."

Mr. Rice is upset. "Just…do whatever you can to make her well." Bailey nods and Meredith follows her away from the family.

"Prep Claire while I book an O.R."

* * *

On the way up to Claire's room Meredith bumps into Alex and they share an elevator. Neither says anything, comfortable in silence, then Meredith turns to him. "If I said yes, would you sleep with me?"

Alex looks her up and down. "Nah. I dig blondes, but you're kind of messed up, you know? Famous mother, all the complexes that come from that. Ask George, though. He's totally into you."

She's never been more pleased to be rejected. The doors open and Alex pats her on the back, then goes off to his next patient, completely unaware that a less dark-humored girl might take high offense at his response.

* * *

After her surgery and subsequent shower after Claire's abscess decided to explode all over her, Meredith is charged with informing the Rices of their daughter's prognosis. She goes to them with trepidation, knowing the news will be hard to digest.

"We were able to reverse the gastric bypass," she begins, "but we did lose a significant portion of her bowel. And because of the short-gut syndrome Claire will never eat normally again." As she'd predicted, Claire's father takes this harder than her mother.

"How do we help her?" he asks.

"Well, getting proper nutrition will be a lifelong problem for Claire," Meredith explains.

Mrs. Rice sighs. "Great! As if we don't already have our hands full with her."

Meredith decides to speak up. "She gets good grades. She stays out of trouble. She's smart. I just think she feels like nothing she does is ever good enough for you."

Mrs. Rice draws herself up straighter in defense. "If you somehow think that I'm responsible for this -"

"I think Claire is killing herself to please you."

Mrs. Rice scoffs at her. "If you had any idea of what's going on in that girl's mind-"

But Meredith does, all too well. "You're her mother. She worships the ground you walk on. She didn't do this for herself."

* * *

" _Meredith! What the hell do you think you're doing?_ " Ellis cried, and Meredith had jumped in surprise. The knife slipped suddenly, cutting a line across the side of her index finger as it fell to the kitchen counter. Ellis took in the scene -the boneless chicken breast, the suture kit beside it with a curved needle neatly threaded, the novice-sloppy attempts on two other wounds Meredith had inflicted on the chicken.

 _"I was trying to-"_

Ellis tugged Meredith to the sink and turned on the water, running Meredith's hand underneath it until the water ran clear. Meredith was thirteen and stubbornly refusing to cry. It wasn't the cut that hurt, that wasn't serious at all. It was the fright of her mother coming home so early that made her drop the knife. Meredith had already made herself dinner and cleaned up, then took the pilfered suture kit from the hospital and decided to learn how to suture.

" _Keep some pressure on your hand. You just need a Band-Aid_ ," Ellis mumbled. " _Where do we-_ "

" _Next to the fridge. The first shelf,_ " Meredith said, and Ellis left her daughter to go for the Band-Aid, returning quickly to wrap two bandage-textured Band-Aids around Meredith's finger.

" _That was a stupid thing to do_ ," Ellis scolds, taking off her coat and scarf and hanging them on a kitchen chair. " _Now, sit down at the table_." Meredith looked at the mess in the kitchen, confused, then went to sit at the table. She watched as her mother threw out the chicken, washed off the cutting board stained with some of Meredith's blood, and ran a damp cloth over the counter. Ellis leaned against the counter for a moment, then brushed blonde hair out of her eyes. She filled the tea kettle with water and set it on the stovetop, then took out two mugs and dropped a teabag into each one. Meredith continued to watch, sitting silently, fascinated.

Ellis sighed. " _Come here_ ," she said finally, impatiently, as if her daughter should have received a cue. Meredith stood from her chair, walking forward, unsure. Ellis took a banana from the bowl of fruit Meredith usually grabbed from on her way out the door in the morning. Deftly, Ellis took a small knife from the cutlery drawer and made a gash across the banana. " _Not very neat, but I suppose it'll have to do. Now, you want your first suture to bisect the wound. Come here, Meredith!_ " She was impatient, but not harsh.

Meredith stood beside her mother and watched as Ellis showed her how to bring the skin of the banana together, just touching. Then Ellis put the needle driver in her daughter's right hand and guided it slowly into the banana-wound, how to hold the skin steady with some tweezers that Meredith had grabbed from the bathroom, and how to tie the first knot.

" _That's where I always mess up_ ," Meredith murmured, trying to concentrate.

Ellis rolled her eyes. " _That's because you've been practicing for what, an hour?_ "

The kettle began to sing, and Ellis left her daughter to finish the suture, pouring hot water into the two mugs and leaning against the counter, passively watching Meredith stitch, the girl biting her lip as she concentrated.

" _Now do two more sutures bisecting the wound on either side of the first one._ "

Ellis wouldn't let Meredith go up to bed until she had finished closing the entire gash on the banana. It took almost two hours for the thirteen year-old to perfect each suture, as Ellis insisted her patient not be left with an ugly scar.

After she had finished, Ellis handed Meredith a cup of cold tea and looked over her work. Meredith sipped the tea and awaited her mother's verdict, her heart in her throat.

" _It needs work. Your sutures aren't going to hold more than forty-eight hours. That's why I say we open him back up and eat the banana_."

Meredith choked slightly on her tea and watched as Ellis peeled the banana and broke it in half with her fingers, leaving the bottom half with the sutures for Meredith.

* * *

Shepherd knocks on the door to a second floor on-call room, then opens it quietly. He sees Meredith pacing, and she looks up at him quickly, clearly upset. He closes the door behind him.

"You paged me to an on-call room? What's going on?"

Meredith looks at him and crossed her arms stubbornly. "I'm not very good at relationships," she said, and immediately regrets it as an opener. "I'm terrible, really. The worst. The further it goes the more scared I get, and I'm usually the one to run away when things get complicated." He looks as if he's about to say something but she plows on. "I know you want to do this the nice way: take me out to dinner and a movie, or whatever, but that's not how we work. We're surgeons. We don't have lives outside of this place. The more you talk about dates, or dinners, the less likely they're going to happen."

"Meredith, I-"

She holds up her hand. "Is this going to be one of those things where we make out in elevators, sleep together, and continue on like nothing's going on? Because this slow burning make out in elevators, drink champagne in front of your trailer thing feels a lot like you said before…like teenagers sneaking around. So I just want to know up front what you think we're doing."

Shepherd is momentarily thrown, then looks at her seriously. "I'd like to not have to sneak around with you, Meredith. But because of our jobs - _both_ of them-," he emphasized, "we do have to be careful. Your success in this program depends heavily on the recommendations from your attendings, and if we're together that means trouble for you _and_ trouble for me."

Meredith nods, uncrossing her arms.

"You're not gonna like it, but if we do continue doing whatever it is we're doing, we've got to be careful, and we've got to try to keep it outside the hospital."

Meredith scoffs. "So what, you can walk in in the morning and kiss me behind a closed door and then continue on your day like nothing happened? Because that's what we did this morning, Derek."

"Sorry," he mutters.

"It's okay," she mumbles.

A serene pause. He reaches to take her hand and squeezes it. "I finished my surgeries for today. How about I take you to a fine dinner at the infamous trailer? I make no promises of the quality of the meal, but I do know there is good beer to accompany it."

Meredith smiles and nods. "I'd like that, Dr. Shepherd."

"All right," he says. "Are you ready?"

She shakes her head. "No, I need to get my stuff from my locker. I'll meet you out by the car. Oh, I forgot."

Shepherd looks at her questioningly.

"I don't have to be back home by midnight."


	8. Little of Your Love

A/N: Thanks for keeping up with this story, everybody! I'm having a lot of fun with it. Please review. It really helps me keep motivated.

Chapter VIII: Little of Your Love

Outside, the air is cold, the a dark night falling, splashed with stars like flour slung into the sky. In the absence of a city and people, the forest around them seems alive as Derek leads Meredith from the car to the trailer. She stops to look out over the fuzzy spindles of the pine trees to the lights of the city and feels his eyes on her as he continues to the trailer door, leaving her in the grass. She feels it all the way through her coat, her layers of clothes, directly into her body. She quickly turns and faces front, her heart thumping around in her chest like a bird in a hallway, looking for an exit.

"I have a toaster oven and a hot plate, but that's it," Derek says, opening the trailer door and stepping inside. "There's pasta and a jar of pesto. I don't know where that came from."

"Pasta sounds good," Meredith calls in. "Should we eat out here?"

"It's a little cold," he says. "I'm from New York, so I'm used to it."

Meredith shrugs. "Well, I lived in Massachusetts, so I'm used to it. I'll unfold the chairs."

She goes to the doorframe of the trailer, looking in to watch him attempt to fill a small pot with water.

"What?" He asks, seeing her amused expression. "You think I'm not capable of making pasta with pesto?"

Meredith shakes her head. "How do you live here?" She looks around, taking in what seems to be the lovechild of a college dorm and a bachelor pad.

"Dry cleaning is a wonderful service. Other than that I've got a toilet, a tiny shower, a table, and a bed. What more could you need?"

"I guess it's a step up from an on-call room," she says. "Now that I think about it, the most time I spend in my house is sleeping or waiting for Izzie to stop hogging the bathroom in the morning."

Derek smiles in satisfaction. "Buy yourself a trailer, park it next to mine. It'll be easier for everyone."

Meredith wrinkles her nose. "I don't want to have to empty whatever kind of waste and water tank comes with this place."

He laughs. "Check in the fridge, there's some beer and an opener in the drawer."

Meredith finally sets her small empty bowl aside and sighs contentedly, picking up her beer and taking a sip. Derek pokes at the small campfire they'd managed to construct which was slowly dying out.

"I could get used to the quiet," Meredith muses. "No pages over the intercom, no monitors, no elevator beeps."

Derek makes a 'hmm' noise in agreement. "Yeah, New York City never shuts down. It never seemed to get really dark there."

A misty rain begins to fall, hissing against the fire, which almost immediately dwindles down to smoke. Meredith looks over at Derek, her face a moon in the field.

* * *

The sheets on his sloppy bed are dark blue, and Meredith thinks of his scrubs as they fall into them, then banishes the connection. She wants this to be between him and her, and not the world around them. He's kissing her neck, her jaw, and she tilts her head back to enjoy it, draping her arm over his shoulder to steady herself as he makes quick work of the buttons on her shirt, pushing it apart like petals of a lily. Meredith tries to do the same, breaking away from his lips to focus her eyes on his shirt buttons in the semi-darkness, a small bedside lamp in the trailer and moonlight outside. He chuckles at her clumsy fingers and finishes the job while she takes off her bra, a job men always seem to have trouble with.

The touch of their naked chests together, her in his lap, is akin to their coffee-kiss that morning -comforting and new all at once. He pulls away to look at her and, for the first time in her life, Meredith realizes that it could really be like this -simple and open, two unrushed willing bodies with fractured breaths between them. He stares at her unabashedly for a moment, her shoulders glowing, and tucks a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. She shivers. His fingers trace down her arm like an artist with his brush, and her skin raises in gooseflesh, now the sides of her breasts.

"Cold?"

Meredith shakes her head. "No, not cold." She feels like she's teetering on top of a needle a hundred feet in the air, and if he doesn't pull her in again she'll fall.

And there was his hand at her neck, pulling her down with him like she'd wanted.

Later, naked and draped over him in his dark bed, Meredith rests a hand on his chest and feels the beat of his heart, drunk with the smell of him, the slow ticking of her own body unwinding. Derek kisses the top of her head and she closes her eyes. A sigh of contentment, too sleepy to talk, and he pulls a sheet over them, a veil over their lover's knot.

* * *

Meredith looks up the next morning as Dr. Shepherd walks into the M.R.I lab. She's been waiting along with the technician for the scans to come up for the rock climbing patient whose case she'd been put on.

"Hey," she says.

Shepherd nods. "What's up?" He sits next to the technician and studies the films for a moment. Meredith points to the spine.

"The guy's films are clear. There's no reason I can see for his creeping paralysis."

"It's just so surprising," Shepherd observes. "I expected an intrusion into the spinal space or something like that."

Meredith shrugs. "Well, you were wrong. What's the next step?"

Shepherd looks her up and down. "You tell me, Dr. Grey."

She takes a breath. "X-ray, blood work? I'd say a spinal tap since his spine looks fine but with the progressive paralysis I'm not sure it's a good idea."

He nods. "Get the blood work and X-ray and page me. We want to make sure this doesn't spread too quickly."

* * *

She finds him later in the pit with their patient.

"Any changes, Mr. Walker?" Shepherd is asking.

"I can't move my legs at all now," Mr. Walker says, his voice panicked.

"He said he was moving his legs when he came in," Mrs. Walker says, her hand on her husband's shoulder. "What's wrong with them?"

"I don't know," Shepherd says, and Meredith can sense the frustration behind his words. "The paralysis is moving very quickly and there was nothing in the MRI to explain it."

"Has Tommy been under any stress lately?" Meredith asks.

"You know what's making me stressed? Being in here and not being able to move!"

Shepherd motions for her to step aside with him. "Dr. Grey?"

"Emotional trauma can be converted into something physical, right?"

He nods. "This is possible."

"Like hysterical numbness or paralysis?" she presses. "Maybe there is no physiological reason and he's just having a conversion reaction."

Shepherd raises his eyebrows. "You think it's psychosomatic?"

Mr. Walker hears them and becomes even more distressed. "Is that it? Am I crazy?"

"No, no," Shepherd reassures, shaking his head. "I'm going to order a higher level M.R.I. We're going to figure this out."

"Doc?" Mr. Walker calls suddenly. "Doc, my hands can't move!"

Shepherd moves forward quickly to the patient. "Squeeze my fingers," he says.

"I can't."

Meredith holds Mr. Walker's chart in her hands and looks on, troubled.

"Try again?" Shepherd asks.

Mr. Walker can't respond. Shepherd looks for a nurse. "Nurse, cancel the second M.R.I and book an O.R," he says urgently.

"You're operating?" Meredith asks, setting down Mr. Walker's chart at the nurses station.

Shepherd nods.

"On what? If there was something to fix, wouldn't we have seen it?"

"The M.R.I missed a clot somewhere in his upper spine," Shepherd says, making a note in the patient's chart. "I'm gonna cut him open. I'm going in."

Meredith's mouth falls open in shock. "What if you're wrong? Couldn't unnecessary spinal surgery do _more_ damage?"

Shepherd looks her in the eye. "We wait any longer and this thing expands into his brain stem we have a paralyzed man who can't breathe. I'm trusting my instincts," he says. "Sometimes you've gotta take a chance to save a life."

* * *

Meredith stands opposite him in surgery, skeptical and worried over the patient yet obediently retracting and applying suction when directed to do so.

"We've got to save this cord," he says gently. "This guy's built like the Rock of Gilbraltar."

Meredith looks up as he hands her a clamp. "You want me to start?"

"No," Shepherd says, shaking his head. "I'm gonna cut here, from the base of the neck to the ribcage. I want you to hit the bleeders."

Meredith purses her lips and fixes him with one last look. "I still don't think we should be doing this." She takes the cautery when the scrub nurse hands it to her, not looking away from him.

"This guy has a spinal hematoma -" Shepherd says confidently.

"We don't know that," Meredith protests.

"-which left untreated are almost always fatal."

Meredith sighs. "You're cutting blind. Whatever happened to being practical?"

"I need to see more here. Retractor." The scrub nurse places one in his hand and he retracts the skin back, revealing the man's spine.

"Wow," Meredith says. "The spine."

He smiles, catching a glimpse of her wonder. "There is no 'wow' in practical, Dr. Grey."

* * *

Four hours later and still no clot located, she can see that even Shepherd is getting frustrated.

"I think I can see his dura pulsating here," Meredith offers.

Shepherd looks quickly. "No, it's not. Keep looking."

"We've been at this for four hours," she says. "Maybe he just injured his spinal cord and there's nothing to fix."

"Grey," Shepherd asks, "when you read your books, make sure you reference them correctly. Progressive paralysis implies a pressure lesion."

Meredith gives him a look over her mask. "My books got me here," she reminds him.

The monitor begins to beep, a sign of danger, and the anesthesiologist takes a quick look. "Pressure's up to 180 over 111, pulse is in the 40's," he warns.

"What is it?" Meredith asks Shepherd.

The anesthesiologist injects medication into Mr. Walker's IV.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" she asks.

"We've got to find the clot," Shepherd says somewhat harshly. Here they are surgeons, thinkers and doers. In an instant all emotional connection between them vanishes and they become champions of their cause: finding the clot Shepherd is convinced is in Mr. Walker's spine.

"I see the cord behind the dura," Meredith says. "Is he going to stroke out?"

"Just focus, Grey, we're going to find the clot," Shepherd says, almost soothingly while the monitor continues to beep. "Get on those bleeders."

Meredith is seriously starting to doubt him. If she wasn't holding surgical tools and tasked with saving this man's life she would wring her hands in frustration.

His eyes suddenly light up. She looks down. "What is it?"

"See for yourself," Shepherd says quietly. "Second thoracic vertebrae."

She smiles, and he sees it in her eyes. "Oh, my God. I see it. It really is there."

He smiles back. "Of course it is!" The surgical team chuckles. "Let's suction and pack this baby, shall we?"

* * *

"You were right," Meredith admits as they take off their surgical masks in the scrub room. "Is he gonna be okay? That was pretty invasive surgery."

"I think so," Shepherd says, taking a bar of soap and handing it to her before taking his own and breaking open the packet. She does the same, and they begin washing their hands and forearms.

"But you don't know that."

He tips his head from side to side. "But I know we stopped the paralysis from advancing."

"But you don't know if the paralysis he already has will be permanent," she reminds, smirking at him.

"No," he admits.

"You know, you keep taking everything on faith," Meredith observes. "How do you know what's real and what's not?"

Shepherd shrugs. "You just do." He smiles at her. "You know, some people would call this a relationship."

Meredith raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me? We slept together once."

"Twice." Does two times in one night count? "And we like to make out everywhere we're not supposed to."

"Okay. Twice. But who would call that a relationship?"

He smiles and hands her paper towels. "Me. I would."

She chuckles. "And I'm supposed to believe you?"

He nods. "I'm all yours. You jump, I jump."

Meredith frowns. "You know, one of them dies!"

He ignores this and instead flicks water onto her. Meredith lets out a gasp of surprise and outrage and tosses her damp paper towels at him in retaliation.

* * *

George looks up from his spot in the chair behind the nurses' desk where he's been slouching, debating whether to ask Olivia, the pretty redheaded nurse out for a drink, and watches as Meredith walks out of the scrub room across the hall, Shepherd behind her. Cristina, who's recovered from the flu and is reading over her patient's chart notices the change in his posture.

"What's up with Meredith and Dr. Shepherd?" he asks.

Cristina shrugs. "He's the head of neuro, she likes neuro, he's a good teacher."

George chews on a pen. "You don't think she'd ever…"

"Ever…?"

George shakes his head. "Nothing. I have to go do something." He stands up and walks toward the stairs, determined to ask Olivia out.

Cristina raises her eyebrow when Meredith comes to join her at the nurses' station. "So? Is he any good?"

Meredith purses her lips, holding back a smile. "Dr. Shepherd is a very capable surgeon."

Cristina snorts. "He looks like he might have some other specialties up his sleeve. And, from the look on your face, I think you know what they are."

Meredith rolls her eyes and walks away. Cristina catches up with her. "So, how was it?"

She pauses. "I'd give him a nine."

Cristina looks skeptical. "Okay, you added a point for the McDreamy hair. Maybe two points, if you're ending a dry spell. There's no way he's a nine." She looks around covertly before saying, "Burke is like a seven, okay? And I'll take seven. I'm a ten, but I'll take a seven. There's no way he's a nine."

Meredith shrugs. "I'll take off a point for ending a dry spell, but I'm keeping the McDreamy hair. An eight, then."

"You know, if you and me are sleeping with attendings, who's to say that Izzie or Alex -Alex! He's got to be sleeping with someone up top!"

Meredith laughs. "Like who, Bailey?"

Cristina grimaces. "Oh, don't put that image in my mind."

"Did someone say 'Bailey'?" Comes a voice from behind them. Meredith and Cristina turn around suddenly.

"Yes," Cristina fumbles. "We were just…wondering where you were."

"So we could ask what we should do next," Meredith adds.

Bailey eyes them both skeptically. "Go on down to the pit. And send Karev up when you get there. I need him to discharge his patients."

* * *

Izzie has just finished a batch of cupcakes and is on the phone when Meredith comes downstairs in her pajamas ready to make a cup of tea. Her roommate hangs up the phone and takes one of her own cupcakes while Meredith puts the kettle on to boil and grabs a mug.

"Cupcake?" Izzie offers, and Meredith looks at it warily, knowing she doesn't need the sugar rush before bed, but remembering that she didn't have any sort of respectable dinner when she came home. Leftover pizza. She puts a camomile teabag in her mug and takes the cupcake.

"So, you want to tell me about where you were last night?" Izzie asks innocently as Meredith bites into the chocolate dessert. Meredith looks up while she chews, a bit of frosting lingering on her lip. "Come on, Meredith," Izzie implores.

Meredith can't help but smile with Izzie looking at her so innocently. "I had an…adult sleepover," she says simply. Izzie's face lights up.

"Oh, give a girl some details!" she says. "I'm not getting any!"

Meredith shakes her head and takes another bite. "Let's just say I am sore in all the right places." The kettle begins to whistle and she sets the cupcake down, going to pour hot water into her tea mug. Leaving it steeping, she pulls herself up onto the counter, leaving her feet to dangle.

Izzie sighs. "Even George has someone."

Meredith laughs. "Really? Our George?"

Izzie nods. "Our George. He's going out with Olivia the nurse tomorrow. So, who's your lucky guy?"

Meredith shakes her head. "Just a lucky guy."

Izzie groans in frustration and puts her head down on the counter. Meredith laughs again.

* * *

That night Meredith holds her pillow in the dark and remembers the morning, how she'd woken up alone and thought, " _Great, another one night stand. He's probably on his way to work_." She'd looked around for her clothes, finding them woven into the bunched up pillows and bedsheets that smelled of their lovemaking. Then she heard the click-clack of the door opening and, wearing only her bra and underwear, pulled a sheet up to wrap around herself.

Shepherd looked at her guiltily, already dressed for work, and she'd sighed with mortification at being found, half-dressed in his bed when he clearly couldn't get out of there fast enough.

"Don't freak out," he said, a smile on his face. She saw he was carrying two large cups of coffee. "You said my coffee was terrible. I went out early to get these. I was going to pour them into mugs and pretend I'd bought better stuff."

Meredith had blushed, even more embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she said. "Let me find my clothes."

"Oh, don't bother. I like you this way. I like your hair even more like that."

She sought out a window and took in her appearance. Her bedhead or, in this case, sex hair, had always been known to defy logic and gravity. She found her shirt and pants and pulled them on, smoothed her hair, and went to the small table to drink coffee with him.

"Thanks for the coffee," she said. "It's from my favorite place, too."

He shrugged. "No problem. You were right, the coffee I have in the cabinet is terrible. New York coffee."

She smirked. "You're in Seattle now. You better get used to coffee snobbery. We take our coffee very seriously."

"I am finding that out. Finding a lot of things out, actually," he said, smiling. "Where'd you learn how to do that thing with your leg?" He made a series of motions with his hand.

"A girl never tells," she said, smiling slyly over her coffee cup.


	9. Salty Sweet

A/N: Wrote this rather quickly, sorry for any errors! Well, we've reached the end of season 1 with an ending that pretty much was the opposite of everything in the last episode (which I found delightful to write...mwahahah). I LOVE Addison and would actually like to write a little of my teenage version of her in some flashbacks maybe, but as one reviewer pointed out, with Derek acting the way he is toward Meredith at this point, introducing a wife would throw all that off kilter. Plus, it's less work for me to just bypass her storyline and get to move on with what I think mine could be! I am going to include other major events from season 2, but maybe not in the way you'd expect. Anyway, I'm just thrilled to be at the end of the first season and so grateful to everyone reviewing or PMing to offer encouragement. Would love to know your thoughts on this, as always!

Chapter IX: Salty Sweet

The sudden and unapologetic ring of her phone makes Meredith throw a pillow over her head at six in the morning on the one day she doesn't have to go in until eight. She tries to dream the phone away, thinking of Derek and the smell of the dark roast he bought even though he liked medium, the way it feels to walk outside to winter-pines and windows fogged from the heat inside his trailer. The phone continues to ring, she counts them like heartbeats until the adult in her wakes up and reaches for the phone.

"Hello?" she greets her caller, her throat itching from last night's…arduous activity, as well as exhaustion.

"Dr. Grey," a familiar voice says, although she can't quite place it this early in the day. "this is Ms. Henry from the nursing home? I'm calling about your mother."

Meredith clears her throat slightly. "Is she all right?"

"Oh, it's nothing like that," the woman reassures.

"Can I call you later, then?" she asks, her eyes still closed as she faces up toward the ceiling in her own bed.

"Um, I just wanted to-"

Meredith squints as Ms. Henry's voice cues a throb in her head that could turn ugly. "I have to go," she says, bluntly shutting the phone and letting it get lost in the bedclothes as she attempts to drown out Izzie laughing in the hallway.

"You know what, it's no big deal," Izzie's saying. "I get it. You have needs!"

Meredith sighs, blowing hair off her face, and knows she won't be able to go back to sleep. The habit of getting up before six every day for the past four months has already lodged itself deep in her being. She sits up in bed, rubs sleep from her eyes, and slouches. Nothing to do but go in at the usual time. Who knows, maybe she'll grab some good patients during pre-rounds.

"What is going on out here?" she says, almost drunkenly as she wanders out of her room to find George and Izzie.

"Nothing," George says quickly.

Izzie smiles knowingly. "Nothing."

As George scurries back to his room, slamming the door, Izzie raises an eyebrow and looks at Meredith. Still scowling, Meredith steals her coffee mug and takes a sip, grimacing at the amount of sugar.

"I think I heard someone come home at around three in the morning," Izzie says.

Meredith shrugs. "You're probably just hearing things. Long shifts and an unbalanced diet can do that to a person." She walks past Izzie to the bathroom and grabs her toothbrush, squeezes some toothpaste onto it and begins brushing.

"Come on, that's the fourth time this week, Meredith! You sure have…stamina."

Meredith sighs in annoyance and spits into the sink, rinses her toothbrush, and looks at Izzie. "My adult sleepovers are none of your business, Izzie!"

Izzie smirks. "What if I voice a noise complaint! I sleep very lightly, and keys in the door at three in the morning is disturbing my sleep cycle."

"I'm your landlord and I say deal with it."

Izzie laughs. "This guy must be some lay."

Meredith wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and moves to go back to her room to get dressed. Izzie looks at the sink, then at Meredith's retreating form.

"Aren't you going to rinse out the sink?"

* * *

It's been three weeks since the first night she spent at his trailer and still her heart skips a small beat when she sees Derek for the first time every day. This time it's in surgery. She looks up into the gallery and there he is, going over charts. On Wednesday night they'd split a clementine at midnight. She lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows with her legs crossed and dangling behind her. He told her he liked to work in the gallery sometimes. He said it was the only place in the hospital where it was completely quiet, and she'd agreed. How could she not, with him looking at her like he wanted to lick the juice from the clementine off her fingers. And there he is now, going over charts in the stillness of the gallery.

After she scrubs out Derek is there again, walking beside her as she checks her pager.

"Nice seeing you last night," he says quietly.

Meredith smirks and says nothing.

"It would be nice if I could see you in the morning sometimes."

She continues walking and doesn't look at him directly. "I don't know what you're talking about, Dr. Shepherd. It's," she checks her watch, "nearly nine. I would classify that as morning." Now she looks at him, and he smiles like he knows what color bra she's wearing.

"Whatever you say, Dr. Grey."

She gives him a small smile in return. "Now there's a sentence I can stand to hear again."

Their moment is fractured by her phone ringing again, and she shoos him away to take the call.

"Hello?"

"It's Ms. Henry again," the voice says.

"Sorry about this morning. What are you calling about?"

"I just wanted to remind you that tonight's our monthly family dinner," Ms. Henry says, her tone a little wary. "You know, you haven't been to any of our family functions."

Meredith nods. "You have to understand I'm a surgical intern, so my time isn't really my own."

"Our residents really respond to these events. They always enjoy themselves, which is so rare. I think it's important you attend. It's at six-thirty."

Meredith leans against a wall and crosses her legs, slouching again. "I'll be there," she says, not fully meaning it. "I'll…try to be there. I'll definitely try."

* * *

She's reading scans in the radiology room the next time she sees him, looking all determined and awake.

"Hey," he says, looking around to make sure they're alone. "Do you want in on a super secret sunset surgery?"

Meredith tilts her head, curious and intrigued. "What?"

He leans forward to kiss her, and she giggles, caught by surprise. "I love it when you're confused. It's so rare."

"What's the surgery?" she asks, still surprised by his energetic demeanor.

"Tumor behind the optic nerve. Seven PM, O.R 2, and we can take home a bottle of expensive champagne afterward."

It's on the tip of her tongue to say yes, and she really _should_ , but a nagging thought in her head makes her hesitate. "I want to," she says. "I really do. It's just…"

"What?"

She shrugs. "There's this thing at my mom's nursing home. A family…whatever. I haven't been to any of them."

He nods. "You go. There will be lots of great surgeries, this one won't be life-changing."

"I really want to," she insists. "I mean, my mom won't even know who I am, so I don't know why I'm going, but-"

Derek puts a hand on her arm. "You go."

"And Derek, I don't think I can come over again tonight. I don't know if I'll be…in the mood," she rolls her eyes. "after seeing my mom. Also, George has syphilis."

"O'Malley?"

Meredith nods. "You know, they're telling people to get tested if they've been sleeping with someone on the staff."

He nods back slowly. "That's a funny thought. Who would ever sleep with a coworker?"

"Derek, stop it. I'm serious. Just for the record, you'd tell me if I need to get tested-"

"You think I have syphilis?" he laughs.

"No, I don't! It's just, we never made any rules or anything. We never said we had rules, and I'm just…I wouldn't hold it against you."

He stares at her, incredulous and amused. "When would I have time to go out and get syphilis? You're a handful enough as it is, and besides, we're practically a condom ad."

She immediately thinks of Sunday night when she'd leapt off of him after he'd worked off her clothes and was seconds away from hitting third base and cried, "condom!" in a voice that made him laugh for five minutes while they fell over each other trying to find one -the last one in the box. But it was true, they were both adamant about protection. Meredith smirks, agreeing with him.

"You see, you've got nothing to worry about," he reassures. "Maybe we should though. Make some rules."

"Okay," Meredith says, "but I've got to get these scans and find Bailey or I'll get kicked off this case."

* * *

At six she leaves the hospital somewhat surreptitiously, having obtained consent from Bailey to leave an hour earlier than she was scheduled. In the car she sighs, wondering why she's going, knowing her mother won't recognize her.

On the way to Rosewood Extended Care Meredith thinks of the summer she was ten, when there was nothing to do at home and she was too young to be left alone all day long. Her mother took her to work with her, waking her daughter up at dawn to pile them into the car and drive to the hospital. Meredith always liked those drives because it was summer and she could open her window in the backseat and let her hand dangle out. She spread her thin fingers out like a stretching starfish and let the hot air run through like the tide. Sometimes they drove in silence, and sometimes she'd ask what surgeries her mother had scheduled for the day, and if she could watch. With her mother it was always Yes or No, never Maybe.

Yes, she could watch her mother's surgery. No, if she was taking up important space in the gallery. Then she would need to find another gallery to sit in. Ellis gave her five dollars for lunch and Meredith soon figured out how to use those five dollars to buy a sandwich, a chocolate milk, and a small banana. She never ate with Ellis. That was a No. Her mother met with important colleagues during the time she wasn't in surgery, and Meredith was not allowed to bother her.

Yes, she could help the nurses with small tasks like handing them paperclips or highlighters, or whatever small job they could find for her. No, she couldn't go onto the pediatric floor and have the nurses call Ellis to come pick her up, not believing Meredith when she said she didn't belong with the other sick children. No, she couldn't go to the daycare and play with the younger children, because then she'd get sick, and Ellis couldn't stay home with her. Meredith remembers trying to conceal a small case of breakthrough chicken pox from her mother when she was eight. But Ellis saw the small spots when she glanced in to watch the babysitter supervising her daughter's bath. The babysitter was fired, but not before Ellis sent her to the pharmacy to buy a special lotion to put on the rash.

The summer she was ten she watched as her mother put the Grey Method to use at Mass. General. She saw how the other surgeons pined after Ellis' approval. How they spoke to her almost reverently. More women applied to be on staff in Boston, even in neighboring hospitals just to have the opportunity to meet the woman who had paved the way for them. A younger nurse named Beatrice told Meredith to call her Trixie and showed her around the hospital. She was the first person Meredith knew in the medical world her mother inhabited who truly seemed to care about her as a child. Too old for daycare and banned from the pediatric floor Meredith didn't see many people her own age when she wasn't in school. Trixie brought her sketchbooks and crayons, taught her Solitaire, and let her watch Disney movies in the nurses' lounge. She even cried when Meredith turned fourteen and went off to high school, spending her summers at home or with friends instead of at the hospital, though sometimes she longed to be there.

Rosewood appears ahead of her, drawing Meredith out of the daze she'd been driving through, its windows lit like a gingerbread house. When she parks the car and walks up to the entrance along with other family members she feels out of place and awkward. She's not in scrubs but she feels almost like an undercover spy. These family members, caring as they are, don't realize the true condition of the family member that they've put inside these walls. Because that's what it is, isn't it? They've put someone somewhere else, so their lives can be easier. Meredith is guilty of this, perhaps more than most, because not only is she not able to care for her mother, she simply doesn't want to.

Inside, the families are finding each other in a large room filled with tables. Meredith looks for Ellis and finds her at a table set for two. Ellis looks annoyed, but she's also turning her watch over and over, which Meredith recognizes as a sign of nervousness. She's not at ease despite her calm demeanor. Meredith walks over and, trying not to scare her, stands a bit away from the table.

"Dr. Grey?"

Ellis turns and sees her, looks her up and down. "I know you," she says after a careful moment.

Meredith nods. "It's me. I'm Meredith."

Ellis smiles slightly, and gestures for Meredith to take a seat. "I have a daughter called Meredith."

"I know. I came to visit you tonight."

Ellis frowns. "Meredith is younger. She's fifteen, I think."

Meredith nods. "Okay, well…should we have some dinner? Do you want me to get some for both of us?"

Ellis nods absently and Meredith takes off her coat, going to the buffet and taking two plates. It resembles a Thanksgiving dinner, which Izzie had tried to assemble but no one had time to attend. Meredith fills the two plates and returns to the table, not sure whether to continue insisting she's the daughter Ellis is remembering or not.

"There you go," she says, putting her mother's plate down in front of her.

"You know, they have these silly things every month. The last one I was stuck next to a dreadful old man who had a colostomy bag -well, I won't bore you." She takes a bite of green beans and smiles. "My mother used to make them just like this."

Meredith doesn't know if she can trust anything her own mother is saying. It's unlikely that she remembers last month's dinner, but the detail of the colostomy bag is impressive. She doesn't know her grandmother, who had died before she'd even met Meredith, so she can't confirm this memory either.

"Mom, you used to say that Grandma made amazing cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. She made it from real cranberries, not from-"

"a can. Yes, I remember!" Ellis says, almost victoriously. "She wrote down the recipe for me, but I don't think I ever made it."

"Dad tried to make it once," Meredith says, suddenly remembering something from her own past. "He tried to make it but he messed up. I think he forgot to add the orange zest. You told him it didn't taste right. You said it didn't taste like it should."

A light seems to dim in Ellis' eyes. "Yes," she says. Meredith has learned that when she responds this way it means that she can't recall the memory. She tries to bring her back.

"I'll try to visit more often, Mom. It seems nice here."

Her mother pulls into focus again. "You're Meredith. But older."

Meredith nods. "I'm twenty-eight now, Mom."

"When Meredith was a little girl she called me 'Mommy'." She stops, fiddles with her watch. "I wonder when it is that children switch to calling their mothers 'Mom'."

"Probably when they hit puberty and think they're too old to need parents."

Ellis laughs. "She always had a dry sense of humor, even as a child. I think she wants to be a doctor, probably because of me."

They eat in silence for a time. Meredith surprised at her mother's memories yet somehow saddened that she isn't being referred to directly. Just this elusive, somewhere-Meredith of her mother's fading memories.

* * *

Two nights later she finds herself with her head resting on Derek's chest, her leg thrown across him, the scent of his skin comforting to her. He's tracing circles on her naked shoulder, connecting freckles.

"Derek?" she asks the window, seeing his face behind hers in the glass.

"Meredith," he says, the tips of his fingers moving lower to the outline of her ribcage, the pale smooth side of her breast.

"Why did you become a doctor?"

The question throws him slightly, and his hand stops, resting on the curve of her hip. "It's complicated."

"I mean, my mother was a doctor, and I became a doctor. A lot of doctors seem to…procreate and make new doctors. I think that's my reason. What's yours?"

He hesitates again, and Meredith begins to grow confused. "It can't be that complicated." She runs a hand down his arm, encouraging him.

"I had a friend growing up, my whole family knew her, we grew up together." He sighs. "One day she has a seizure, turns out she had a tumor. Operable, but she didn't want the operation."

"Why not?" Meredith asks gently. The night is like a still pond and every word is a raindrop on its surface.

"Too risky," he says. "We all thought she should have it but she wouldn't. She said she'd rather die than lose who she was." A long pause. "Eight months later she was dead. Sixteen years old."

Meredith turns in his arms, her eyes wide and sad. "I'm sorry," she says.

"I was a senior in high school. And I knew then, the day she refused the surgery. I knew I'd become a surgeon and work to make that surgery safer. There's a picture of her in my wallet."

"Can I see?"

He nods. "Hold on, let me find it." He gets up from bed, leaving her lit up by the sliver of moonlight coming in. He comes back and hands her a wrinkled photo. There they are, side by side, a young Derek looking like he wanted to be athletic but wasn't really, and a tall girl with a volleyball tucked under her arm wearing her team uniform, blue and white. She had her arm draped over his shoulders and they were both smiling. Meredith runs her thumb over the girl's dark red hair, pulled back and held with blue and white ribbons.

"What was her name?" Meredith asks, pulling the sheet up to cover her as her body grows cool without him.

"Addison," Derek speaks the name gently, the way you'd talk while snow is falling. "And the funny thing is, I've never come across a tumor like hers before. Not in my whole career. The size, the placement."

Meredith smiles and gives him back the photo. "I think you must have been in love with her."

He nods. "We all were. She was witty, got along with everyone. She was a fair person. I think that was what made her different. She actually wanted to be a doctor long before I did."

"What kind of doctor?"

Derek winces. "O.B."

Meredith laughs. "What's wrong with O.B?"

"It's the pink scrubs. You can't take someone seriously when they're wearing pink scrubs."

She bats his arm. "That's _not_ fair! Besides, not all O.B surgeons wear pink scrubs."

He falls back into bed and pulls her with him. "I think she was in it for the babies, though. Neonatal. My little sister Amy was a preemie. We got to go visit her in the hospital because I think they kept her there for two weeks. And Addie saw all these tiny babies. We were like…seven."

"So," Meredith says, "we're both in it because of people."

Derek nods. "I guess we are. What's this about, anyway?"

Meredith shrugs against him. "Oh, something my mom said at dinner the other night. She said I was going to be a doctor because of her."

Derek wrinkles his brow. "I thought you said she didn't want you to be a doctor."

Meredith sighs. "I know, and at first I thought maybe I became a doctor because I wanted to rebel against her. You know, try to prove her wrong. But I think maybe I did do it because of her. Because I wanted to do what she did. It seemed so badass."

He chuckles. "You are a badass."

She smiles wickedly. "You bet I am."


	10. Yours Forever

A/N: Not long since my last update, so I hope people got a chance to read it. I figure if I have a chapter I should just post it instead of waiting and potentially losing some creative energy. News items: I'm changing the rating from K+ to T, I fiddled with the summary a little bit so it looks a little less like 'Meredith and Derek never got together' and more like 'they did, just not in the way they did on the show'. Also I definitely think I won't be devoting a chapter to every single episode, especially because Addison won't be there to give a nice plotline. It's also less pressure on me to try and work everything in. Sometimes I feel like I'm neglecting the characters a bit because I focus on Cristina, Meredith, Derek, and Ellis. Let me know if you want some more of a certain character and I'll try to work it in! Thanks again for reviews and messages. They really make my day! 3

Chapter X: Yours Forever

Meredith remembers seeing her new home in Boston for the first time, either very early in the morning or late at night. It had been partly furnished, but the pieces were old and there were no curtains on the walls, only blinds. It was a good house, and would eventually be transformed into a place Meredith would call home until she went to college. She crawled onto a squishy brown sofa and watched through droopy eyes as her mother took inventory, went through the downstairs rooms, counting boxes. She then heard the heels of her mother's boots above her through the ceiling, and found the creakiness comforting in a way, because it reminded her of their home in Seattle. If she closed her eyes she could pretend they were back in the rainy city.

Meredith can't remember how long it was before her mother reappeared downstairs, but suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder and she was waking up, holding her arms out like a toddler, wanting to be held and too tired to realize that this was her mother, and she wouldn't be. Ellis told her that only one bed had been made up, and that it was time to sleep, so it must have been nighttime. She led her up the stairs and opened Meredith's suitcase, handing her a summer nightgown that Meredith changed into. The bathroom was across the hall, but there was no stool to stand on to reach the sink as she brushed her teeth.

"Mommy, I can't reach," Meredith said, her mouth filled with white foam. Ellis, still dressed, came to lift her up so she could spit out the toothpaste and splash her mouth with water, then set her down.

"Go on to bed," she said quietly, and watched from the doorframe as her daughter shuffled across the room to the unfamiliar bed in the new house. Meredith remembered that Ellis had already changed the sheets, so at least something smelled like home, a bit like lavender.

 _Mommy, where are we going?_

 _Somewhere else. Anywhere else._

Outside, the sound of sirens. Through the blinds the nearby streetlamp bled through onto the wall and cast amber shadows in the room. The house seemed so empty, as if she were the only person on a queen-sized raft, honeyed glints dancing off the dark waves, a lighthouse behind her. And a slight air of mourning from the doorway where she thought she saw her mother leaning, looking as if she'd lost something.

"Mommy?" Meredith asked the wide water around her.

"Yes?" Ellis said, although she didn't move. Her voice was scratchy.

"When can we go home?"

Ellis crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes, then lay down with a sad sigh. Meredith sat up, her hair messy from the flight, the drive she'd slept through, and the restlessness that was currently making it impossible to sleep.

"We're not going back. This is home now."

Meredith turned and curled into her mother, unconsciously draping her arm across her. Ellis stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as she heard her daughter's breathing slow into an even rhythm. She watched in the darkness as the girl's little fists relaxed. Suddenly a memory rushed to surface inside her. _A baby hand, the tiny fingers curled around her own long index finger on a rainy Autumn morning. Those same hands a year later, clasping tightly onto hers while she took her first steps. Two years old, a tiny burn on her palm that had made her cry. Four years old, a chubby hand taking her mother_ _'_ _s pulse with a plastic stethoscope, babbling, and Ellis calling Thatch to take her away, she needed time to read the latest Lancet. Five years old now, six in November._

* * *

December is making Meredith tired. She could blame it on the long shifts at the hospital, or getting older, or cafeteria food, but, honestly, it's the amount of sex she's having. The problem is that before, during, and after the act itself she couldn't be happier so, honestly, she's the one to blame. And Derek. Whatever they are together, because they still haven't talked rules. Maybe they should make rules, like he said. But, honestly, rules tend to make things complicated and concrete. She doesn't like rules.

Cristina bursts into the on-call room and flips on the light, closing the door behind her.

"Get up."

Meredith opens her eyes but doesn't move, instead fixing them angrily at Cristina. "I was sleeping."

"You were not sleeping. Sleeping people don't wear shoes," Cristina says, a hand on her hip.

"I was thinking," Meredith hisses. "In the dark. With my shoes."

Cristina rolls her eyes. "About what?"

Meredith crosses her arms. "Nothing. Why are you here? Why do I have to get up?"

Cristina sits on the edge of the bed. "Because of Burke."

"Burke? Did he page me?"

Cristina rolls her eyes again. "No, not Dr. Burke. Burke. The one I'm sleeping with."

"Oh. Burke. So?"

"So, I think he thinks we're dating, or something."

Meredith blinks. "Okay. Why are we freaking out?"

Cristina sighs in exasperation. "Come on! Despite the whole 'attending with intern' thing, he's trying to be all _caring_ and dinner date-y _,_ and it's weird. It's weird, right?"

Meredith, still laying down, nods. "Very weird."

"Is Shepherd boyfriendy?"

Meredith shrugs. "I think he tried some kind of wooing technique before we got together. But we kept putting it off and finally jumped the gauntlet, so it didn't matter."

"'Gauntlet?'"

"We had sex."

"Right." Cristina gnaws a nail. "So a date before sex is the courtship phase, then sex happens, then…what's the purpose of dates after you start having sex?"

Meredith shrugs again. "To remind each other you're not in it just for the sex?"

"What if I'm just in it for the sex?"

Meredith finally sits up, her dull headache coming back with the motion. "We're surgeons. We don't date. Not officially. For a date to happen you both need time off, at an appropriate hour…it's much too stressful. A date for me is getting to operate with Derek."

"What if you're operating with Burke?"

Meredith chuckles. "It's not a date. We're not sleeping together!"

Cristina smiles. "Ah, the romance of surgery. _Forceps, Dr. Yang._ "

" _Suction, Dr. Grey_."

Her pager beeps and Meredith reaches down to pick it up, glancing quickly at the name. Cristina's eyebrows go up questioningly.

"I think I've got a date," Meredith says, sticking her tongue out.

Cristina sighs and takes Meredith's place on the bed when she gets up. "Enjoy it."

* * *

Meredith shakes off the sleepiness of eleven PM and heads to the pit, where she finds Joe, the man who poured her tequila in the beginning of her internship when she still had the energy to go out after a shift and drink. A group of hospital staff are hovering outside his room, all worried about their favorite bar-owner.

"What's going on?" she asks, and takes the chart Derek holds out. She flips it open and skims. "Joe collapsed?"

Derek nods. "Hit his head pretty hard, too."

She looks up. "Well, is he gonna be okay? Does he need an operation?"

"Operation? Yes. Okay? Hard to tell. Basal artery's blown up like a balloon, subarachnoid bleeding, aneurism the size of a golf ball."

Alex looks up from behind the nurses' desk where he's been lounging, keeping a lazy eye on the pit. "Not gonna clip that without magic fingers," he says.

"Or a standstill operation," Derek says suddenly. Meredith is fully awake.

"You're doing a standstill operation?"

Derek nods. "I'd like to try. But first I need some additional patient history, overnight labs, and a cerebral angio." Alex stands up, startling the nurse beside him, and looks at Meredith as she takes Joe's chart.

"I'll get patient history, you get the angio, meet back here in thirty?"

Meredith smiles. "How long are you covering the pit, Alex?"

"Off at midnight." He looks at Shepherd, back at Meredith, back at Shepherd. "Come on, Shepherd, she gets all the good surgeries! Put me on the case!"

Shepherd looks amused. "Karev, work on history and labs. Meredith, get that angio. If you want to stay after your shift, Karev, you're in."

Alex does a victory fist pump as Shepherd walks away. He pats Meredith on the back, making her laugh. "Grey, tomorrow we are going to kill a man."

* * *

After managing to catch four hours of uninterrupted sleep -alone-, Meredith reports back to the pit to talk Joe through a landmark operation along with Alex, Dr. Burke, and Dr. Shepherd.

"It's the location of the aneurism that makes it tricky," Shepherd begins.

"Your body temperature would be lowered cool enough to protect it from any damage and stop the heart," Dr. Burke adds.

"Which stops the blood flow to the brain, which reduces the risk of a rupture," Shepherd says. "I'll have forty-five minutes to clip the aneurism-"

"Before I step in and get the heart started again," Burke finishes. Alex does another tiny victory fist pump next to Meredith that is hidden behind Burke's back. Meredith smirks.

Joe looks significantly confused. "Wait a minute. You want to freeze my body, drain my blood, and stop my heart?"

"And bring you back," Shepherd says confidently.

"In under forty-five minutes," Joe confirms.

"Right."

"If you go over forty-five is it free?" he asks.

"No," Alex says suddenly.

"Dr. Karev," Burke says patiently, "you can go handle the pre-op labs."

Alex nods and picks up Joe's chart, heading to the nurses' desk again for the proper forms.

"Grey, go with him and make sure he doesn't screw anything up," he adds.

* * *

Four hours into the surgery and Shepherd steps back from his microscope.

"That's all I can do for now," he says, and takes a deep breath. Meredith sees that he's tired. Derek, like Alex, has forged two shifts together, only he's the one operating with the pressure of a clock pushing him forward.

"All right," Burke says. "Let's start cooling him."

She and Alex help the O.R nurses cover Joe with cooling blankets and bags of ice to facilitate the lowering of his body temperature. Meredith looks up to the full gallery and sees Cristina looking on, eating a granola bar.

After just ten minutes the room is colder, and Meredith bounces on the balls of her feet next to Alex, trying to retain a bit of warmth. She sees Shepherd's eyes crinkle in an amused smile as she does it. While they're waiting for Joe's body to reach the correct temperature the O.R becomes a somewhat social setting. Even Shepherd and Burke are talking, and Alex leans slightly towards Meredith.

"So, what is it with you and Shepherd?"

She looks up, surprised and caught. "What do you mean?"

Alex shrugs. "It just seems like he, I don't know, he gives you all the good cases."

Meredith rolls her eyes. "I was on call."

"Still."

"There's nothing going on, Alex."

He laughs quietly, yet their conversation is completely concealed from the rest of the chattering room by their masks. "Whatever. Just…be careful."

Meredith scoffs again. " _You_ be careful, or I'll dunk you in one of those ice bowls."

"Body temp is at sixty degrees," the anesthesiologist announces, and the room quiets immediately, although there are some chattering teeth behind them.

Burke approaches the patient. "Okay, Joe," he says. "Time to die." He begins to clamp the various tubes coming from Joe's body to stop blood flow. The heart beat slows, then flatlines.

"All right, we've got forty-five minutes, people," Shepherd says, and a scrub nurse starts the clock.

* * *

Everyone is in a good mood by the time the surgery is done. It went well and was an overwhelming success. Joe is going to be all right. As they're scrubbing out, Shepherd waits for the rest of the team to leave before watching Meredith grab a bar of surgical soap and unwrap it, completely oblivious to his staring. He loves how clear and sharp her eyes are during surgery, and how gentle they can be out of it, the hint of strawberry hair by her ear, the delicate sweep of her jaw.

"You're pretty after surgery," he says, yawning.

She glances at him and scoffs. "You're not. Your eyes are bloodshot. You need sleep."

He nods. "Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I've been off since yesterday, and now I'm gonna go home and sleep until someone hits their head on something."

Meredith dries her hands and throws the paper towels away. "You know, I'm off, too. And my roommates aren't off, which means my house is empty. And my house is a whole lot closer to the hospital than your trailer."

"Dr. Grey, is this an invitation?" he asks in a whisper.

She smiles tiredly. "I think it's an offer of convenience more than anything."

* * *

The drive home is bright, with the morning sun hitting every storefront and windshield and bouncing back to their eyes. Derek tries to cover his and look at her CD collection at the same time while Meredith focuses on driving.

"Find anything you like?" she asks. "I'm sure there are some very embarrassing college purchases in there somewhere."

He holds one up to squint at. "Bob Dylan. Approve. Radiohead…eh. Fiona Apple, unsurprising." He digs back to the end of the row. "Here's something. 'Our Mix Tape' with a heart drawn on it?"

Meredith laughs. "Oh, that's from Emily, a girl I lived with in med school. A bunch of us rented this horrible apartment and threw stupid parties where we played the same songs every week. I think we were too tired to care."

Derek moved to put it in.

"Oh, don't put it on. We're almost to the house and plus, I don't need to be reminded of those dark years."

"Please," Derek says.

"No!" Meredith insists. "Besides, look, here we are." She pulls into the driveway and puts the Jeep in park. She leads him inside, both of them sleepy. "I can't promise how safe it is in here."

He looks at her worriedly. "Safe?"

She shrugs. "Izzie's trying to make it all homey but George _did_ break a lamp in the living room last week and we can't find the vacuum cleaner."

"What are all the boxes?" Derek asks, suddenly more awake, peeking in one of them. Izzie had tried to stack them neatly at one corner of the living room, but that stack had soon morphed into a makeshift table, and the boxes lining the staircase were just…there.

She shrugs again, yawning. "Just my mom's old stuff. Come on." She holds out her hand, and he takes it. The stairs creak as they walk up, and she kicks aside a pile of dirty or clean laundry by the top of the staircase.

"It's like a frat house, but with nice furniture," Derek observes.

"I'm taking that as a compliment," Meredith mumbles, struggling to take her shoes off and stumbling into her room. "In here," she says, and he follows, watching as she shrugs out of her jacket and begins to take off her jeans.

"Meredith," he begins, "I'm really-" but he doesn't finish his sentence as she pulls on sweatpants and throws her bra and long-sleeved shirt to one side of the room. She goes to the bed, half dressed, and picks up a ratty Dartmouth shirt, pulling it over her head and shaking her hair free from the neckline.

"There's no way you're getting into my pants until we've both slept for at least four hours," she croaks from the right side of the bed, already burrowing into the covers.

"Thank God," he exhales in relief, getting undressed and crawling into bed beside her.

* * *

Hours later in the quiet afternoon she rolls over to find him already waking up, she's missed the smell of a man in her own bed. She notices the shadow that's beginning to cover his cheeks and jaw but says nothing, telling him with her fingertips across his face how she feels, then leans up to kiss him, laying her smooth cheek against his rough one. He'd slept without a shirt, and she moves to run her palm across his chest, kissing his ear, his throat.

The arm around her reaches for the hem of her shirt and tugs at it, and Meredith happily obliges, sitting up to pull it off and watching his eyes when they fall on her chest, his expression better than any mirror. They still haven't said anything, and she doesn't want to break the silence so she shucks her sweats and underwear and climbs on top of him, grateful for his grounding hands on her, the heat of his palms. She leans down and he tilts his face up to her as if he were trying to kiss the sky, her hair falling like a gleaming tent around their faces.

How different it was to be with him. With other men she'd always been the moon and them the sun: they could give her their warmth or withhold it, pursue her or forget her. Derek sits up as they kiss as if she was the source of light. Strange —she doesn't feel the impulse to show off for him. Ellis always scolded her for her tendency to let emotions cross her face. " _One attracts others with mystery_ ," she said, " _not by turning one_ _'_ _s pockets inside out_." Perhaps that's why Meredith tries to let her eyes be the pools her feelings swim in. Derek treats her as if she were as mysterious as a hidden spring. She loves seeing herself through his eyes. Everything around them seems to shimmer in the dream light. She feels drunk on it.

"I'm dizzy," she whispers. He holds her head still and kisses her swollen lips.

This time it's slow, maybe the afternoon has something to do with it -its apparent tranquility, their solitude in the large house, the absence of sound except their breath echoing each other, his groans, her gasps with a note of music behind them. Oh, the bliss of that hour. They are naked with their feelings, stopping and starting again, then laying wearily in each other's arms as the light in the room fades.

In another life this would be the time she'd sit on the windowsill and smoke a cigarette like the girl in a film noir, blow rings into the six PM deep winter. Instead she leaves him half-sleeping and showers, letting the warm water run over her eyelids. Derek joins her after a moment and it's all business, no soap games, her shift begins in one hour and her roommates are finishing theirs. He dresses quickly and glances in the mirror, taller than her while she brushes her teeth. He frowns at his five o'clock shadow.

"I think it's sexy," she says, her voice low and scratchy.

"I think you're sexy," he says, and she rolls her eyes, brushing through her wet hair.

"I think we need to get out of here before George and Izzie's shifts end so I can drop you off and they can take the car."

He waits while she dries her hair and gets dressed in the same jeans and a different color shirt, then is rushed out by her into the Jeep. They drive again in silence, less tired but more relaxed. Meredith looks in her rearview mirror and Derek steals a glance at her, then looks out his own window.

"So, we talked about making rules."

She looks at him carefully. " _You_ talked about making rules."

He smiles. "What sort of rules?"

She shrugs. "Rules. I don't know. _You_ mentioned rules, now come up with some examples."

"How about calling you my girlfriend?"

She looks at him again. "Would that make you my boyfriend?"

He nods. "If it's in the rules."

She snorts. "So, no one can know we're together, and yet I'm your girlfriend."

He nods again. "In principle, yes."

"Rule number one: I'm your girlfriend but will not be referred to as such in front of any coworkers or in the workplace in general?"

"Agreed. Rule two: see rule one, replace 'girlfriend' with 'boyfriend'?"

She nods. "Okay. Rule number three: no sex eyes at work?"

He shakes his head. "Can't agree. Sex eyes are my specialty. I give good sex eyes."

She clicks her tongue. "Rule number three: no special treatment."

He shrugs. "No special treatment, agreed." A pause. "You once told me you run. You run away when things get complicated. Rule number four: no running."

Meredith puts on the turn signal and its ticks seem loud. "No running," she agrees gently.

He smiles contentedly. "There you go. Rules. That wasn't hard."

Meredith drives a bit, finds her old parking spot, and parks the car. "No, not hard."


	11. Bird Set Free

A/N: I actually wrote this the same day I published chapter 10 but couldn't work my way to a proper ending, so that took me a while and finally came to me this morning! Let me know your thoughts about this direction of the story, or what you think Derek's reaction will be!

Chapter XI: Bird Set Free

The phone rings at five AM and Meredith picks it up without opening her eyes or checking to see who it is.

"What?" she barks.

"It's me," Cristina says, sounding quieter than usual.

Meredith sighs. "This better be good, because I came home from a night of sex two hours ago and we have to be at work at eight."

"Burke and I broke up."

Meredith opens her eyes. "Oh."

"Ever since the chief's super secret sunset brain surgery and the whole interim-chief thing he's been acting like he's super important," Cristina says. "Like he should dump his quasi-girlfriend because it makes things too complicated for him and his importantness."

Meredith nods, then remembers her friend can't see her. "How do you feel?"

"How do you think I feel? I feel like I got dumped. I'm usually the dumper. I've never been the dumpee."

"I've been the dumpee." Meredith sits up and moans. "You know what this calls for?"

Cristina's voice is more animated. "What?"

"Running."

"Running? You run?" Cristina sounds suspicious.

Meredith shrugs. "Sometimes. I've been the dumpee. It helps."

"Meet you at the park in a half hour?"

Meredith groans. "You know, I am being such a good friend right now."

* * *

The only people at Myrtle Edwards Park before eight in the morning are those annoying people who exercise regularly and are confident enough to do it in public. It's cold out, making the tip of Meredith's nose turn red. They begin to run along one of the flatter paths overlooking the bay. A cramp soon reminds her how in shape she is, but she pushes through it for Cristina's sake. Her friend groans and slows to a stop but Meredith continues to jog in place.

"Oh, you're stupid!" Cristina exclaims, bending over and nursing her own cramp. "You're a stupid, evil sadist and I want to kill you!"

Meredith gestures for them to move along and Cristina follows her down a browned hill. "Endorphins are good, endorphins are mood elevators. This is supposed to make you feel better!"

Cristina groans and leans over, breathing heavily. "Oh, God, do _you_ feel better?"

Meredith shrugs, stopping beside her friend. "I feel less tired, which is weird considering I spent last night having -"

"Spare me the gory details," Cristina says, panting. "Sleeping with our bosses was a great idea."

Meredith looks up at the sight of a ferry boat. "Derek has a thing for ferry boats."

"You're gross on endorphins," Cristina makes a vomiting sound. "You know what's ruined for me? Coronary artery bypass grafts! And aortic aneurisms! God, I used to love aortic aneurisms." She slumps down to the ground and looks up at Meredith. "The endorphins aren't helping."

Meredith slumps down next to her. "Have you cried about it?" she asks, predicting the answer.

"No!" she props herself up on one arm. "Do you think I'd feel better if I cried about it?"

Meredith shrugs. "I usually do. But I'm usually drunk when I do it."

* * *

In the locker rooms George, Cristina, and Meredith watch as Alex and Izzie drink coffee together, seemingly having an enjoyable conversation together.

"What is she doing?" Cristina asks, pulling her hair back.

George takes his time. "She's hanging out with Alex."

Cristina looks a mixture of unbothered and annoyed. "Why?"

"I don't know," George says, not moving. "I think…they might be friends."

Meredith ties her shoes, not wanting to offer her two cents by saying that Alex isn't all that bad once you've spent five hours with him in an O.R. And he's more perceptive than they give him credit for.

"Okay, people, let's go," Bailey announces herself in her usual no-nonsense manner. "Now, I get off at seven today and I don't want you fools jeopardizing that. Now, come on, we'll start in the pit."

On the way there Izzie tries to defend Alex. "You guys, he's really sweet once you get to know him," she insists.

"He's Alex," George points out.

"Yeah, punk-ass," Cristina snorts. Alex turns around in front of them and calls back to Meredith.

"Hey, Grey! Izzie was telling me you have tapes of your mom performing surgery. I'd kill to see The Ellis Grey in action," he says.

Izzie smiles. "Hey, you know what? Maybe you can come over tonight and we can all watch them together!"

Cristina gives her a look. "Oh, yeah, if this were a hell dimension."

Bailey turns around and shoots them a look of her own. "Are we saving lives or having a tea party? Come on, walk faster, people!" They scurry to keep up with her.

* * *

The pit isn't too full, but there are a couple interesting surgical cases that George and Izzie swipe before the rest of them can get their hands on them. As per Meredith's request, she's not on a neuro case and is leaning at the counter of a nurses' desk waiting for a patient chart when the doors to the emergency room open when she hears her mother's voice.

"Get your hands off me or I'll report you to the chief and you'll be out on your ass!" she's saying in the abrasive tone Meredith knows all too well. She watches as Cristina grabs her mother's chart and struggles to get through the beginning. "You're all amateurs!" Ellis shouts.

"Patient's name is…she's complaining of internal cramping pain and diarrhea, also suffers from Alzheimer's," Cristina manages under Ellis' mad cries.

"Patient's name?" Bailey prompts.

Cristina fumbles. "Um, Ellis Grey."

Ellis catches sight of Meredith, who can't bring herself to move, rooted to the spot, her heart pounding. "What the hell are you doing here?" she shouts. "Haven't I told you? How many times do I have to tell you not to bother me when I'm at work?!" Meredith turns her head away reflexively and regains her footing, making a seamless exit and hiding from view against a neighboring wall. Her mother's cries echo down the hall. The secret's out. No undoing it.

* * *

Meredith walks back to the locker room, deaf, the journey seemingly endless, her heart rate lowering as she reaches the empty room, the cool air. She holds herself up leaning against a locker and inhales deeply, closing her eyes for a moment. It won't be long before one of the other interns finds her, but she's surprised to open her eyes after five minutes and see Dr. Bailey standing in the doorway. Her friends are whispering outside the door but Bailey pushes them back with assignments and waits until it's quiet again. Meredith hears her walking into the empty room. She shuts the door behind her.

"Are you able to work today?" she asks.

Meredith nods. "Yes. I'm fine."

Bailey looks at her. "Because I would understand it if you wanted to be with your-"

"No. My mother and I don't have the easiest…It's just better if I work."

Bailey nods and checks her watch. "Okay," she says, "you're on scut."

Meredith looks up. "I told you. I'm fine."

"I appreciate that you're fine, but I have to anticipate a certain level of distraction from you today even in the face of all that fineness." She watches her intern's face carefully, noting the subtle stress in the way she's holding her jaw. "Now, scut. Go."

* * *

Around the corner after leaving, Meredith runs into Cristina.

"Hey, how are you?" Cristina asks. When Meredith doesn't answer, she continues. "I mean I get why you didn't say anything."

Meredith looks up. "She made me promise. Derek's the only person who knows, and that was because I cried in a scrub room and it just…slipped out."

Cristina bristles a bit at not being the first one Meredith confided in, but recovers quickly. "So, I'm doing the friend thing. Do _you_ need to cry?"

Meredith shakes her head. "No! I just need a good surgery to take my mind off it."

"Oh, thank God!" Cristina exclaims in a whisper. "Take Burke's thoracotomy this afternoon."

Meredith raises her eyebrows. "Really?"

Cristina nods. "My gift to you in your…time of need, or whatever."

* * *

On her way to finding Dr. Burke Meredith tries to peek into her mother's room, attempting to stay as invisible as possible. Her stomach turns into painful knots, but the sight of George lessens them. He looks at her, slightly startled, and clears his throat.

"Um, she's allergic to penicillin," Meredith offers quietly.

He nods. "Yeah it's, uh, in her chart."

"Oh." She sees how anxious he is, and it doesn't help her summersaulting insides. "You just have to be patient with her."

He looks at her, poised to ask a question. "Okay. Um, who's 'Thatch'"

Meredith blinks in surprise. "My dad," she says. "Thatcher. What is she…Is she talking about him?"

George nods, clearly uncomfortable.

"She never talks about him," Meredith says quietly.

"Are you all right?" George asks.

Meredith nods affirmatively. "Oh, yeah, I'm good. It's just…I can't be here. I don't want to make her upset. I have a surgery with Burke."

He raises his eyebrows questioningly. "Wait, I thought Cristina had Burke's surgery?"

"We…switched. It's fine. I'll see you later."

She lingers by the door, watching as George goes back in to examine her uncooperative mother, then looks across the busy room and sees Shepherd looking through patient charts. She walks over to him and he turns at just the right moment.

"Grey," he says. She loves it when he calls her that. It's comforting, in a way. "Hey, I heard about your mom."

She shrugs. "Secret's out."

He looks at her. "You look pale. Are you okay to work?"

Meredith nods. "Yes. And if my mom were lucid she'd be saying the same thing. I know it." The thought almost makes her smile.

"I have a break between surgeries at two. Want to get bad sandwiches?" he asks, seeing her rub a worried hand over her stomach. Meredith shakes her head.

"No, I'm in surgery with Dr. Burke. We'll probably be a while. I'm actually running late so…"

He nods. "Okay. I'll see you later, then."

She smiles a small-lie smile. "Okay."

* * *

Strangely, the memory that comes to her on the way down to the O.R is the night her mother came home early from her trip to Germany and found her seventeen year-old daughter in her poster-decorated room, the smell of pot clinging to the air like summer heat, an empty bottle of vodka and a half-finished bottle of tequila at Meredith's foot from where she sat, one leg dangling off the window sill, the other planted on the floorboard of her room, a joint in her left hand.

" _Hey, Mom_ ," Meredith slurred. " _Sorry about the mess. I meant to clean it up before you got home_."

Shock registered in Ellis' eyes. " _What the hell do you think you're doing_?"

She pushed through the dirty laundry and crumpled packs of cigarettes, pulling her daughter back from the window with surprising force and taking the joint, throwing it out the window before slamming it closed. Meredith laughed a sad laugh.

" _Like you care_."

Ellis slapped her across the cheek and dragged her to the bathroom, handing her the first toothbrush she could find. " _Go on, get it out. You know how, don't you_?"

Meredith held onto her cheek but scoffed. " _I'm not sticking that down my throat_."

" _Do it_!" Ellis cried, forcing the toothbrush into her daughter's hands and holding Meredith's hair -the ends dyed a blushed-pink- back as she vomited up the small amount of her stomach contents into the toilet. After a few minutes of heavy breathing Meredith looked up, tears smearing her mascara.

" _Get up_ ," Ellis said, helping her daughter up and watching as she splashed water into her mouth and spat it out, then flushed the toilet. " _I will not have my daughter sitting around the house getting drunk and high while I'm not here! Do you understand me_?"

Meredith stared defiantly into the eyes whose color she shared. " _Is that a rule_?" she asked, " _Because you never noticed before._ " Her voice was low and rough.

Ellis pointed a a sharp finger at Meredith. It trembled. " _You are the daughter of a world-renowned surgeon_ -"

Meredith laughed. " _It's always about you, isn't it, Mom? I'm never my own person to you, just your daughter_."

Ellis scoffed. " _What the hell is that supposed to mean_?"

" _Everything I do is a reflection on you! I do well in school and you don't even notice, but when I don't get at least an A in chemistry it's like the world is ending_!"

Ellis went back into Meredith's room and picked up the two bottles and crushed the packs of cigarettes into one hand, walking downstairs to throw them away.

" _That's right! Just walk away! Because I don't exist, do I_?" Meredith followed her downstairs, trying to walk in a straight line and trudging through the house to the kitchen where her mother was closing the lid to the trashcan and washing her hands of the ashes.

" _I'm raised you to be an extraordinary person, and your problem_ -"

" _Is that what I am, Mom_?" Meredith asked, calmer now, leaning against the wall for support. " _Your problem_?"

Ellis sighed, running her hand across her face, looking tired. " _Your problem is that you don't seem to care who you become. You don't have any particular talents, anything that sets you apart, any friends_."

Meredith began to cry. " _Who would want to come here? My mom's a fucking tyrant_!"

Ellis looked at her daughter harshly but said nothing. Then, " _You exist, Meredith_."

Meredith looked up, stubbornly swiping a hand across her makeup-stained eyes. Her breathing was fractured, her throat felt like shards of glass were scraping at the edges. She closed her eyes, then opened them. " _Was there any time, ever, that you loved me_?"

* * *

Meredith finishes scrubbing in, the smell of the soap making her feel slightly nauseas, and walks into the operating room with her wet hands held up, waiting to be gowned.

"Dr. Yang, you're late," Dr. Burke says, not moving his eyes up from his work.

"Actually, it's Dr. Grey," Meredith says. "Cristina was put on a different case."

He looks up, then back down. "Well then, you're late, Dr. Grey."

"Yes, sir," she says. "Sorry, sir." Good thing Cristina's rid of this ass.

She goes to stand with the other interns after being gowned and recognizes some as wannabe-anesthesiologists. It's hard to see what Burke's doing, but she tries to lean forward and see, at the same time hoping to ease the ache in her lower back.

"Just starting to dissect around Mr. Gaston's tumor," Burke's saying. The click of metal instruments, the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor. "I've almost got visualization."

She watches carefully, wondering why it feels so cold in the room, like it had when they were lowering Joe's body temperature.

"The tumor has invaded the pericardium," Burke says. Meredith wets her lips under her mask, wondering why they suddenly feel dry, and looks up at the gallery, the motion causing her head to throb. "Dr. Grey? Grey?"

Meredith focuses back on Dr. Burke. "What? I'm sorry."

He looks at her. "Is my surgery interfering with your daydreaming?"

The room sways a little, and Meredith tries to plant her feet farther apart, like she'd done on the Paris metro to keep steady. "No," she says. "Sorry."

"Well then would you like to take a closer look?" he asks. "Step forward."

Meredith moves towards the table and finally comes to a stop, feeling like she could throw up and never stop. The colors around her suddenly seem cracked, like barnacles on a humpback whale. Seeing the inside of another human being isn't doing anything good for her stomach.

"There is an arrhythmia when I press down on the tumor," Burke observes. "That is a sign of what, Grey?" But his voice is distorted by the beeping, the click of the instruments, the room suddenly burning hot.

"I think I…need to sit down," Meredith says quietly, suddenly wincing.

He chuckles. "We're surgeons, Dr. Grey. Sitting down isn't an option. Now, take a look at the tumor and -"

"I can't breathe, I can't breathe," she gasps, pulling off her mask with shaking, gloved hands and gulping in air. Burke looks up in time to see her fall, crumpling onto the ground and hitting her head hard on the floor. A flood of O.R nurses move to her immediately. The people watching in the gallery stand up in confusion.

"Grey?" He calls, unable to move from his patient. "Somebody help her!"

The O.R nurses are checking her head, rolling her over gently. Meredith tries to talk but all the faces are the same and she can't see anyone's eyes clearly. The world around her is blurred like smeared ink. She's freezing cold. The next moments pass in a series of warped sounds and dizzying images.

"Dr. Grey, can you hear me?" One nurse is asking.

"How hard did she hit her head?" Another one murmurs.

"Check her pulse."

"Talk to me!" Burke shouts. "What's going on? Get a gurney in here, damn it!"

The second nurse lifts Meredith's gown slightly and looks at the first nurse. "There's blood," she murmurs again, then pats Meredith's sweaty face dry with her discarded mask. "She's bleeding through her scrubs, Doctor. Someone page O.B."

"O.B?" Burke asks.

The first nurse sits down next to her and pulls Meredith's head onto her knee. "Hold on, honey," she says. "Just hold on."

* * *

She twists and turns on the gurney, eyes closed, as some strangers wheel her out of the O.R and into the hall. Everything they're saying is said quietly and discreetly and once she hears the doors of the elevator close behind them Meredith pulls off her oxygen mask. "What's happening?"

A middle-aged woman takes her hand. "Dr. Grey, is there any chance you could be pregnant?"

Meredith turns her head away, wincing again and finally feeling the stickiness between her legs. "What? No, no. I'm not pregnant." She looks up as the two nurses exchange a knowing look. She closes her eyes again in pain. "Oh, God," she gasps, and one woman clasps her hand.

* * *

She opens her eyes and at the ceiling, the tiled ceiling of a hospital. To the left the window looking out toward the hall of what looks like the post-op floor, to the right Cristina curled in a chair, looking at her worriedly. Meredith smiles a small, tired smile. She feels weak and exhausted. A bird with a broken wing.

"What happened?" she asks quietly.

Cristina clears her throat slightly and glances down for a moment, fidgeting with her nails, then looks back at her friend. "Um, you had an extra-uterine pregnancy."

Meredith opens her eyes wider but doesn't move. The painkillers are wearing off and a dull throb in her abdomen threatens to become more than subtle if she moves an inch.

"Your left fallopian tube burst," Cristina continues. "Dr. Sommers did everything she could but…"

Meredith nods for her to go on.

"There was too much damage. She couldn't save the tube." Meredith notices her friend looking out the window beside them and turns her head as carefully as she can, seeing Alex and Izzie leaning on the nurses' desk looking inside. She turns her head back to Cristina.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Cristina asks quietly. "I mean, _me_? Does _he_ know?"

A single tear slides down the left side of Meredith's face, her eyes shining green. "Cristina, _I_ didn't know."

Cristina stops picking at her nails. "What?"

Meredith nods. "I swear I didn't know. If I had I would have told you."

A companionable silence. She turns her head and waves for her other friends to come in. Izzie and Alex file in carefully, like they're intruding. Cristina looks at them but doesn't move.

"Hey," Izzie says, "how are you feeling?"

Meredith tries to smile. "Like I just had surgery. It's not a good feeling."

Izzie nods understandably. She pats Meredith's hand, gives it a little squeeze, then goes to sit by Cristina.

"Lucky for you I brought the drugs," Alex says as if nothing life-altering has happened, looking at her vitals before injecting some more painkillers into her I.V.

"Hey, you're not so bad after all," Meredith smiles, and he ruffles her bangs slightly, which she blows out of her face. Cristina looks up at Alex and sees him differently for the first time as the one person among them who had made Meredith genuinely smile. "Where's George?"

"With your Mom, I think," Alex says. "We paged him, though."

"Do you need anything, Meredith?" Izzie asks.

Meredith shakes her head. She looks up at the ceiling and then closes her eyes, staying like that for a moment until they fill with tears and she she's forced to open them. The tears run in two paths down the side of her face. She continues to weep for a moment, then feels Izzie take her hand and squeeze it again. She lets out a mix of a sob and a laugh, then continues to laugh, even though it hurts.

Her friends seem confused when she looks at them. Even slightly worried.

"What is it, Meredith? What's wrong?" Izzie asks, truly concerned.

Meredith's laughter calms a bit but she still smiles and wipes her tears away. "It's stupid, and it doesn't make sense, and it's just…stupid. But I want to see my Mom."

"Mer, your mom won't…"

Meredith smiles again. "I know! She won't know it's me. We don't even really like each other. But for some stupid reason I want to see her."

Izzie looks at Cristina. "I don't think we should move her."

"I have an idea," Alex announces.

"Here we go," Cristina mumbles, glancing at Meredith, who smirks back.

"No, seriously. You all clear out of here and let her rest," he says. "I think I can bring your Mom here."

Cristina scoffs. "Seriously? I mean, you're joking, right? Bailey will _never_ go for that."

As the pain killers start to take effect, Meredith's eyelids grow heavy and they begin to flicker closed.

 _"_ _You exist, Meredith._ _"_

 _"_ _Was there any time, ever, that you loved me?_ _"_

"Screw that," Alex is saying. "She wants to see her mom!"

* * *

She doesn't know how much time has passed the next time she wakes up, only that the lights are dimmed and the hospital seems hushed in a late-afternoon quiet. She blinks several times and rubs at her eyes with her right hand, then tries to prop herself up. The light suddenly turns on, blinding her for a moment.

"Don't even think about sitting up," Alex says suddenly. Meredith slouches back in bed. He helps a woman up from a wheelchair. "This is the patient I was telling you about, Dr. Grey."

Meredith's eyes widen as she sees her mother walk toward her. She's wearing a hospital gown with a long mustard-colored sweater over it. She approaches the bed in a no-nonsense manner and takes Meredith's chart, looking over it.

"He's right," she says, "you shouldn't be moving. You'll be in bed for at least a week after a surgery like this."

Alex lingers by the door but is leaning outward, giving them privacy.

"I don't know a Dr. Sommers, they must be a new hire." She closes the chart and picks up Meredith's hand, pressing two fingers to the inside of her wrist and looking at her watch with the other. "Pulse is steady. How are you feeling?"

Meredith shrugs slightly, her eyes focused completely on her mother's face, not knowing what to do or say. "I feel fine," she manages.

Ellis sets down her hand. "Well I wonder why they asked for a consult. I should be on my way, I have a surgery in an hour I should be preparing for."

"Wait!" Meredith calls, wincing as she tries again to sit up. "Do you remember me?" she asks, laying back down. Ellis takes up her chart again and looks at the name, then at Meredith.

"Meredith?"

Her daughter nods. "That's right. I'm Meredith, Mom. I'm your daughter. Do you remember?"

Ellis looks a bit surprised. "Yes," she says, the same 'yes' that Meredith has heard a dozen times by now. The 'yes' that means 'no'. Ellis suddenly becomes a bit upset. "I told you not to bother me when I'm at work. Go home, Meredith," she chides.

Meredith sees Alex come back into the room and he watches as tears begin to run down her face again. She stubbornly wipes them away as Ellis goes back to the wheelchair.

"I'll be there in a minute, Dr. Grey," Alex says, wheeling her into the hall and motioning for a nurse to keep an eye on her. He comes back into Meredith's room and flips the light off, then comes to her bed, sitting gingerly on the edge.

"You okay?"

Meredith sniffs and nods, then smiles when Alex gives her shoulder a squeeze.

"Okay. Go to sleep," he says, standing up and going to the door, shutting it behind him. Meredith wipes her eyes again, feeling silly and dramatic, then looks out the window of her room in time to see Derek appear at the nurses' desk, ask a question, then look at her door, at her window. She takes a steadying breath, suddenly full of hummingbirds.


End file.
